Posts Tagged ‘Medical Malpractice’

The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on America happened almost nine long years ago and still the suffering goes on.

Only now are legal settlements nearing for many of the first responders who were injured when they dove into carnage of the World Trade Center towers that day and in the months to follow, recovering the remains of the almost 3,000 victims of the tragedy.

Finally, after a seven-year-long legal fight, a federal judge in New York last week approved a settlement deal, according to a story in The New York Times. Now, at least 95 percent of the 10,000 affected workers, which includes firefighters, police officers, building janitors and volunteers, must agree to the settlement deal by Sept. 30 for it to be finalized, according to the story.

Image credit: © iStockphoto.com/alancrosthwaite

This case spotlights the long legal road that plaintiffs often have to follow in such incidents.

It’s also a great reminder that if you are involved in a legal case where you suffer injuries and monetary losses that it’s imperative for your rights to be represented by a legal team that has your interests at heart.

Whether you suffer from injuries in the workplace, on a cruise ship, in a motor vehicle accident, a train, plane or bus crash, due to medical malpractice or any other kind of injury, you need to be sure that you get the best legal advice and representation that you can find.

The right attorney can help you minimize your mental anguish as your case is pursued through the legal system.

You want to work with an attorney who keeps you informed about your case every single step of the way.

You want to work with a lawyer who tells you every detail about the status of your case, from discussions with the defendants to settlement offers, medical reports and every other facet of your situation.

You want a legal team which you can trust and confide in and openly discuss your case and its status, whenever you need to talk.

And you certainly want to have easy access to discuss your case on your own schedule, with a lawyer who is there to listen and support you.

At MyPhillyLawyer, that is our pledge to you.

We will stand by you as long as it takes, and work through your case with you as a team.

The long legal fights that have involved the first responders from the World Trade Center site stand as a difficult reminder about how long complex legal cases can take to settle.

Similar situations will likely come out of the oil spill debacle in the Gulf of Mexico, where legal cases are sure to drag on for many years as plaintiffs seek damages for injuries, their livelihoods and their properties from BP and others.

If you or your family ever find yourselves in such a situation where you have suffered injuries or damages, remember to pay heed to several key first steps:

*Don’t sign anything. Don’t release your rights to anyone else until you have had a chance to talk with your lawyer.

*Don’t make any statements. Be sure you call your attorney and first discuss with him what happened and how you were injured. Let your attorney deal with everyone else.

*See your doctor and seek medical attention immediately for any injury that you suffer.

Try to maintain records of your injury case, from cell phone photos to a diagram of the accident scene to witness accounts and police incident reports, if available.

Your case is a team effort between you and your lawyer.

Be sure you select a law firm that gives you the confidence to go into your legal fight together, united, with ultimate victory as our collective goal, so that you and your family receive the monetary award that you deserve.

When losing isn’t an option, give the legal team at MyPhillyLawyer a call.

Whatever your needs, MyPhillyLawyer is waiting here to help you to ensure that you have the strongest team that you can put together.

You have our pledge on that.

Imagine being at work for 24 hours or more in one stretch and having to maintain your peak performance every long hour and minute.  That’s a tough challenge.

Now imagine that your work involves patient care and life or death decisions as a medical resident in a teaching hospital, with shifts lasting 24 to 30 hours at a time.

That’s how things have been set up in teaching hospitals for years, but it’s not necessarily the best thing for patients.

Image credit: © iStockphoto.com/asiseeit

Well-deserved changes could be coming, though, in the form of new standards from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), which is responsible for the accreditation of medical training programs in the U.S.

In an announcement this week, the group unveiled proposed new standards which would curtail the permissible working hours of medical residents in hospitals to increase their efficiency and better assure the safety and care of the patients they treat.

This is a great idea for healthcare patients across our nation.

It will better protect patients from medical errors made by exhausted young doctors and will mean improved oversight and care for patients.

It could also mean fewer tragic medical malpractice cases that are filed each year by the families of patients who receive care that is laced with errors caused by exhaustion and inexperience.

Those cases should never happen in the first place.

The proposed new standards include several major improvements, such as reducing the maximum work shift of a resident from 24 hours down to 16 hours in one stint.

Long hours by these young doctors-in-training have long been a hazard of their work and lead to sleep deprivation and other health issues, according to critics.

An earlier round of similar rules changes made back in 2003 that began to recognize these hazards would be improved upon with the new proposals, according to an Associated Press story this week.

“The proposal slightly revises regulations adopted seven years ago and would have the biggest impact on interns — new doctors in their first year of residency training programs in hospitals after graduating from medical school,” the AP story reported. “They would be more closely supervised by experienced doctors and the maximum length of their work shifts would be cut from 24 hours to 16 hours. Maximum work shifts would remain 24 hours for residents in their second year and beyond. Maximum work weeks would remain at 80 hours for all hospital residents. All residents and their supervisors also would be required to explain their roles to patients and explain that supervisors are ultimately in charge of their care.”

All of these proposals are excellent and will go far – if hospitals and medical facilities adhere to them – to improve patient care and reduce tragic treatment errors.

For you and your family members, these are important changes that can have meaningful impacts if you have to be treated in a hospital.

How large an impact will this have on medical residents and hospitals around the nation?

According to the ACGME,  one in every five doctors in the U.S. today is a medical resident or a fellow, which means that the impact will be noticeable.

The ACGME is accepting comments on the proposals for 45 days and will then submit a final draft for the recommended standards to its board in September, according to the group.

Hospitals say they are worried that the proposed cutbacks in hours would mean shortages of doctors and increases in costs for bringing in additional medical staff.  Some critics argue that the proposals don’t go far enough and will still lead to exhausted doctors who are more prone to making mistakes.

At MyPhillyLawyer, we feel that the proposals are yet another important step to fine tune and improve the healthcare treatment system in the U.S.

We support these changes and hope that the ACGME continues to lead the way in its role in increasing patient safety and reducing medical mistakes in the years to come.

These kinds of improvements can’t come soon enough.

Just ask a family member who has had to sue for medical malpractice after a loved one has been seriously injured or died from errant treatment by a rushed or exhausted doctor.

Those kinds of tragedies are something that no one should ever have to endure.

Have you been injured in an accident? Generally, you only have two years from the date of the accident to file a personal injury claim. It is important that you contact a lawyer right away so as not to miss your opportunity to recover compensation for your injuries.

However, there are some exceptions to this rule. In this month’s video blog, Attorney Dean Weitzman of MyPhillyLawyer explains the exceptions to the general statute of limitations and who they apply to.

Medical malpractice lawsuits are the talk of Washington, again, as President Obama seeks to reassure Republican lawmakers that he is willing to listen to them and consider their recommendations for fixing healthcare. For most of these Republican Senators and House Representatives, there is but one solution to our nation’s woes and that is tort reform.

Even though analysts and experts have shown time and time again that medical malpractice lawsuits make up but a small amount of our country’s healthcare bill – these lawmakers are intent on limiting patient recourse following a preventable, medical mistakes.

What kind of injuries are we talking about?

How about Martin Harnett? Martin passed away this year – 14 years after the doctor present at his delivery ignored signs of distress, leaving him with cerebral palsy and in need of care, 24/7.

What about Marcus Murray, who went to the hospital with an aortic tear, following a heart attack? Marcus suffered severe and permanent damage after he was refused treatment at a Pennsylvania hospital because he did not have insurance. He too will now require care around the clock, for the rest of his life.

Still, some lawmakers persist in making medical malpractice the great crusade of healthcare reform. They point to it when they need something to blame for the rising costs of healthcare and the increasing number of Americans who cannot afford it. By this logic, one would assume that, as healthcare costs have increased, so have medical malpractice lawsuits – right?

This just isn’t true.

In a recent article, David Wenner, of The Patriot-News, points out that Pennsylvania medical malpractice lawsuits have actually decreased – nearly 40 percent between 2000 and 2008. As for those cases that were brought to trial, a mere 20 percent resulted in patient victories. Even with this decrease, health care costs have continued to rise.

These results aren’t limited to Pennsylvania. Even in states like California, where tort reform has already been enacted, many citizens have been left without healthcare as costs continue to rise. Still, lawmakers supporting tort reform like to point a finger at lawyers and say that “frivolous lawsuits,” are keeping healthcare from more Americans.

The truth?

These lawsuits are making sure that someone’s son, daughter, mother or father is getting the care they need because of a mistake that left them exposed and helpless. These lawsuits make sure that there are consequences for major medical mistakes, so that some other family will not have to suffer the same pain.

Tort reform may be worth considering, but it is not an end-all solution to America’s healthcare problems and, to claim that it is, is to ignore the truth.

Below is a great video featuring Senator Richard Durbin, during a bipartisan healthcare debate.

Related Resources

• Pennsylvania data shed light on national malpractice debate (Penn Live)

Are you willing to give up your rights to be compensated fully for ALL of the damages caused by another?

If you are injured in an accident, you can be sure that you want to recover every dollar you are entitled to for your treatment and for your pain and suffering.

But insurance companies for years have been trying to fight you tooth and nail to minimize what they pay out to you for pain and suffering due to your injuries so they can maximize their profits at your expense.

This is why we are constantly being bombarded in the legal world with proposals for caps on pain and suffering awards for injured people – a maximum dollar amount that can be paid to injury victims based on numbers pulled out of a hat, rather than on reality. Those proposals come from insurance companies and their very active, highly-paid lobbyists, who want to keep the money from you so they can keep it for themselves.

Image credit: © iStockphoto.com/stuartbur

Caps are not fair for injury victims. They say that your pain and suffering, no matter how severe or long-term, has a finite value and that your case is not worth any more than the arbitrary figures designated by the caps. Such caps are only good for the insurance companies.

Caps have been introduced under the argument that they’re helping to control escalating health-care costs. But that’s not true. The costs of actual health care aren’t changing via such caps. The “savings” are only being seen in the payouts by insurance companies that are trying to pay out as little as possible to injury victims. That’s an insult to the victims.

Insurance companies argue that caps help them control costs for everyone by stopping inflated damage awards. If that were the case and if those lower payouts were saving them money, why don’t we all see lower insurance premiums as a result? Because they’re pocketing the savings to fatten their own wallets, all at the expense of victims who are seriously injured in accidents and are being limited by unfair caps on their damage awards.

If a cap on pain and suffering awards is set at $250,000, for instance, then an injury victim would be limited to only that amount for their case in their lifetime, even if their injuries were so severe from burns, a vehicle crash or other catastrophic event that they could no longer work. That is outrageous.

How about if we turn the whole world of injury payments upside down and put the onus on the real perpetrators? What if you are a victim of medical malpractice and are severely injured due to an error by your doctor or hospital? Then why not create a $250,000 maximum payment cap for your injuries from the insurance company, and force the errant doctor and hospital to pay for any and all medical treatment above that for the rest of your life? Then the ones who actually caused your grievous injuries are being forced to remember it each day because they’ll have to pay for your care. That might make it more real for them the next time they treat a patient.

In states across the nation, this issue of damage caps and their legality is being reviewed. A $500,000 cap on medical malpractice damage awards imposed several years ago in Illinois was struck down last month by the Illinois Supreme Court, according to a story in BusinessWeek.  The court found that “the limits set by the Legislature violate the state constitution’s separation of powers principle,” the story said.

This is a key theme in the fight in Congress today as the health care reform proposals continue to be batted around between Congress and the White House. Many Republicans in Congress continue to argue that such damage caps are a good way to rein in health costs. Well, that may sound like a great sound bite, but that will change the minute you are involved in a serious accident or are the victim of medical malpractice. That’s when you’ll realize that your rights are being limited all in the name of “solving the nation’s health care crisis.”

Instead, caps of pain and suffering damage awards are arbitrary and protect only the insurance companies, doctors and hospitals. They are not looking out for the victims of such tragedies. Instead, it’s an attempt to deprive innocent victims of their day in court.

Yes, as a personal injury attorney, I do have a vested interest in this emotional topic. But that doesn’t make my premise wrong. When you take away the rights of the individual in favor of a corporation, which is what damage caps are doing, then I can never side with the corporation. An individual’s rights are paramount to those of the insurance companies. I am not ashamed to say that.

After hearing all the evidence and rendering a decision, if a jury verdict is too high after a trial, there are natural controls to fix that problem and make the award fairer. The trial judge can lower the award, as can state Superior Court and Supreme Court judges, if necessary.

We don’t need caps. That’s a red herring.

If your child has been injured during the birthing process, you may be entitled to financial compensation for their medical care. You may also receive compensation for suffering and loss of quality of life due to the birth injury.

In this month’s video blog, attorney Dean Weitzman of MyPhillyLawyer lists the three most common ways a birth injury occurs. He also emphasizes the firm’s role in securing compensation so that parents can maximize their child’s potential.