The state of Iowa has reported that it has paid nearly $6.6 million to settle claims and resolve "disputes caused by employee mistakes, workplace misconduct or other damages in the past fiscal year." Of the $6.6 million, more than half was used to pay settlement and judgments involving medical malpractice suits. This amount included a nearly $3.3 million medical malpractice settlement involving the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the $3.3 million medical malpractice settlement involved "a child that was born with cerebral palsy whose parents alleged his condition was the result of negligence on the part of University of Iowa staff during labor." Specifically, the suit claims that a Cesarean operation should have been performed earlier in the labor process and if it had, her child would not be living with his condition.  

In another Iowa medical malpractice case, state officials paid $500,000 to settle a claim initiated by a family that claimed their family member contracted Legionnaires' disease at University Hospitals and died as a result. The family of a woman, who died in Sept. 2006, filed a lawsuit in 2008 alleging that she died of Legionella pneumonia after she was exposed to the disease as a patient at the hospital.

Another case involving University Hospitals forced the state to pay $250,000 to settle a case that claimed negligence on the part of the hospital in 1997. The suit claimed that surgeons acted negligently during the process of repairing a girl's congenital heart defect. The girl's parents claimed that their daughter sustained multi-system injuries due to complications that occurred when surgeons removed pacing wires from her heart.

Source: Chicago Tribune "Iowa pays $6.6 million to settle claims in FY2010" 07/30/2010