Ohio Personal Injury Law Blog

An in-depth look at the source and variety of mistakes being made in hospitals in one state that lead directly to medication errors is broadly instructive and has clear relevance in Ohio and throughout the rest of the country.

The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority examines medication mistakes voluntarily reported by medical facilities and then makes them available for public scrutiny. Over a recent six-month period, that body analyzed more than 800 so-called "wrong patient" mistakes committed in hospitals.

The at-home birthing experience chosen by many millions of women is often a purposeful and well-planned event intended to make the arrival of a new child a truly meaningful, memorable and warm occasion. For obvious reasons, many women prefer the welcoming confines of a home to the laboratory-like and clinical environment of a medical facility for having their baby.

And those heightened expectations are usually met, if not exceeded, for a family greeting a newborn at home.

That is not always the case, though, and when birth trauma accompanies the birth process, it can play out in especially tragic way.

The story of a long-time doctor and expert in infectious disease goes far toward telling the tale of misdiagnosis maladies occurring in hospitals across the United States.

Dr. Itzhak Brook was informed that the severe throat pain he was experiencing was acid reflux, when, instead, it was rapidly spreading and potentially fatal cancer that was properly discovered and treated only after seven months of recurring visits. Brook said that he was "really shocked" bythe  diagnosis and that a simple procedure would have identified it much earlier in the process.

A study team of Johns Hopkins researchers says that it is time to put to rest with finality the claim of medical organizations, doctors' groups and some legislators that medical malpractice payouts are the overriding cause of constantly escalating health care costs.

That is simply not true, say the researchers. Nor is the notion "that frivolous claims are routinely resulting in $100 million payouts," says study leader Dr. Marty Makary.

What is formally known as the "da Vinci Surgical System" was hyped right out of the box as a next-generation robotic surgery tool that could work in concert with surgeons to deftly perform procedures ranging from hysterectomies to heart valve repairs. The stated upside has always been that myriad types of surgery can be performed with the robot assist in a minimally invasive manner.

The verdict is still out on the downside, although evidence that is accumulating is increasingly identifying a number of problems both with the robotic systems themselves and with doctors committing surgical errors while using them.

New medical interns are unquestionably busy throughout their working day, attending to a number of diverse tasks ranging from research and data entry in electronic medical records to fulfilling educational requirements and assisting more experienced doctors in miscellaneous ways.

Ironically, though, their daily work involvement doesn't seem to place much stress on what the medical profession has historically paid great lip service to, namely, close and recurrent doctor-patient interaction.

In fact, posits a new study that scrutinized the working days of 29 new interns at Johns Hopkins facilities, far more time is spent on "indirect patient care" than is allotted for personal contact.

And that, researchers note, has disturbing implications for hospital negligence, medication errors and other negative outcomes spurred by inadequate familiarity with patients' histories and needs.

Sara Jerde a fellow in Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism Statehouse News Bureau, filed the following story with the Columbus Dispatch.

An apology or other sympathetic statements health-care officials make to their patients can't be used as evidence of liability in medical-malpractice cases. Lawmakers enacted this years ago.

The Supreme Court of Ohio clarified yesterday that this information can't be used in cases filed after the "medical apology statute" legislation took effect on Sept. 13, 2004, even if the treatment occurred before then.

"Doctors admitting that he did something wrong - that could be huge. That could be a large piece of evidence," said Dan Abraham, attorney and part-owner of Colley Shroyer & Abraham, a Columbus association of trial attorneys that specializes in medical-malpractice cases.

But these emotionally charged conversations don't belong in court testimony, argued Dr. William Wulf, medical director of Central Ohio Primary Care.

"Physicians are and should be sympathetic and empathetic. Fear of future legal action shouldn't impede that," Wulf said.

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision was prompted by a medical-malpractice case that accused Dr. Randall Smith, a general surgeon from Portage County, of admitting his guilt to causing complications after removing Jeanette Johnson's gall bladder.

The Johnsons first filed their original suit in 2002, months after Smith allegedly said, "I take full responsibility for this. Everything will be okay."

The couple voluntarily forfeited the case in 2006, but re-filed a complaint in July 2007.

But because the case was filed three years after the legislation passed, the apology couldn't be used in testimony, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

The clarification reversed a Court of Appeals ruling.

For more on the story go to -

www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/04/24/doctors-apologies-cant-be-used-against-them.html

Colley Shroyer & Abraham is a plaintiff's firm that has focused on medical malpractice and wrongful death cases for over thirty years.  For more information about this Martindale-Hubble, AV Rated Firm go to -

www.colleyshroyerabraham.com/PracticeAreas/Medical-Malpractice

A lack of oxygen at birth was the core allegation in protracted litigation that just ended in stunning fashion in a New York court. We pass along the key developments of that birth injury litigation to our Ohio and other readers, given that similar delivery-related stories occur in hospitals across the United States.

What transpired last week at trial in New York is noteworthy for several reasons. One such reason is that the medical malpractice lawsuit that just reached a verdict went through a lengthy and convoluted process en route to a conclusion that the plaintiff family's attorney calls "justice."