Clients often ask me “do I need to come to court with you for our court hearing?” In this short video, I answer this common question and let you know what role you have in the lawsuit process and what …
Nursing Home Guide: Medicare’s Nursing Home Checklist
In order to choose the best nursing home or long-term care facility for your loved one, Medicare offers several tools to compare facilities, look up facility rankings and to learn more about each individual facility. Medicare also offers a comprehensive …
How to Pick the Best Nursing Home for Your Loved One
As the population in the United States continues to age, it is estimated that there will be 19 million Americans over the age of 85 by the year 2050. Currently, 1 in 8 Americans resides in a long-term care facility …
Savings from ‘Tort Reform’ are Mythical – LA Times
Tort reform is the rallying cry of politicians to combat what they see as “frivolous lawsuits.” The have convinced a large portion of the public that insurance companies deserve better protections than everyday people. The Governor of Illinois has made …
Medical Malpractice: The 1% of Doctors
The New England Journal of Medicine has analyzed data that 1% of physicians account for approximately 32% of paid medical malpractice claims. The data – which was pulled from the National Practitioner Data Bank – shows that over a recent 10-year period, a small number of physicians with distinctive characteristics accounted for a disproportionately large number of paid malpractice claims.
A study of 70,000 malpractice claims against approximately 55,000 doctors from 2005 through 2014, the Journal analyzed data with the hope of understanding the distribution of malpractice claims among physicians.
Among all of the physicians with paid claims, 84% incurred only one malpractice claim during the study period, which accounted for 68% of all paid claims. Of the remaining physicians, 16% had at least two paid claims during the relevant time frame, accounting for 32% of the claims.The last 4% of doctors had at least three paid claims (if not more), accounting for 12% of the claims.
Physicians who had three paid medical malpractice claims have three times the risk of incurring another paid medical malpractice claim in the future. Practitioner speciality also plays a role: the risk of malpractice among neurosurgeons, for example, was four times as great as the risk among psychiatrists.
The Journal’s conclusion boils down to this startling fact: “A small number of physicians with distinctive characteristics accounted for a disproportionately large number of paid [medical] malpractice claims.”
Avoidable Medical Errors: The Third Leading Cause of Death in America
The Center for Justice & Democracy reports that according to the report, published in the Journal of Patient Safety, ‘between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death,’ the study says. Only heart disease and cancer cause more deaths in America than avoidable medical errors.
Source: Marshall Allen, “How Many Die From Medical Mistakes in U.S. Hospitals?” ProPublica, September 19, 2013, cited in CJ&D’s Briefing Book: Medical Malpractice – By The Numbers (p. 77)
Source: Spotlight: Avoidable Medical Errors Are the Third Leading Cause of Death in America | centerjd.org
J&J Must Pay $72 Million Over Talc Tied to Woman’s Cancer
From Bloomberg Business News: Johnson & Johnson must pay $72 million to the family of a woman who blamed her fatal ovarian cancer on the company’s talcum powder in the first state-court case over the claims to go to trial. …
Chicago’s Lead Water Risk
While the lead contamination in Flint has captured the nation, it has also raised questions about the safety of drinking water in other cities across the United States. Here in Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reports, 80% of properties in Chicago …
Do Red Light Cameras Save Lives?
http://abc7chicago.com/video/embed/?pid=1169614 A Daily Herald analysis of 52 intersections across 29 suburbs shows. After cameras were installed, crashes involving injuries stayed the same or increased at nearly half the intersections where that data was reported. Crashes considered hazardous increased at nearly …
Truamatic Brain Injuries: Penn Team Furthers Understanding of How Concussion Can Cause Permanent Injury
Concussions are all too common in professional and college football. Doctors are now a step closer to understanding how concussions cause traumatic brain injuries and permanent damage to the brain. A University of Pennsylvania team has developed a new …