Articles Posted in Medical Malpractice

When I clicked my way to Syracuse.com this morning to check out the Syracuse Post Standard news, I was both surprised, and not surprised, to read that Dr. Holsapple, a former Upstate University Hospital neurosurgeon, had sued the Hospital for retaliating against him after he voiced concerns about dangerous medical practices there. I’ll tell you why I was both surprised, and not, but first let me summarize the allegations.

In the lawsuit, Holsapple claims that, at Upstate University Hospital, safety took a second seat to profit concerns, and that the Hospital regularly covered up their mistakes and bad medical practices by doctoring the medical records. For example, the suit contends that a neurosurgeon was allowed to oversee spine surgeries in two different operating rooms at the same time, which Holsapple says was way too dangerous. Statistics seem to support the Doctor’s allegations; at the time, five times more patients were dying from spine surgery at Upstate compared to the national average.

Holsapple also alleges that when he complained about the dangerous, unethical practices, the Hospital responded by demoting him and cutting his pay. For these reasons, he claims, he resigned from Upstate in early 2009, and that’s why he is suing, too.

In my last blog, I explained the maximum legal fee in a New York personal injury case. The fee is different, however, in medical malpractice cases, and that’s the topic of today’s blog post.

In medical malpractice cases, New York law provides for a “sliding fee” in which the lawyer’s percentage drops as the amount recovered increases. The sliding scale goes like this: 30% of first $250,000 of recovery, 25% of the next $250,000, 20% of the next $500,000, 15% of the next $250,000 and 10% of the recovery over $1. 25 million.

Notice that the fee in a medical malpractice case (sliding scale starting at 1/3 and dropping down to as low as 10%) is lower than the fee in a regular personal Injury case (straight-out 1/3 regardless of the amount of the recovery).

I came across this article in the New York Times titled “Mistakes Still Prevalent in Hospital Care, Study Finds“. The article didn’t tell me, a Central and Syracuse New York medical malpractice lawyer, anything I didn’t already know. To know how prevalent hospital malpractice is, all I have to do is pick up phone and listen to the stories my clients tell me.

The Times article discusses a recent, extensive study on hospital errors and problems. This is the first major study of hospital malpractice since 1999. That one caused a public outcry when it revealed that hospital malpractice causes a million injuries a year, and more than 50,000 deaths, in the U.S. alone.

The new study concludes that things have not improved since 1999. Here is a very scary statistic: About 18 percent of hospital patients are harmed by medical care, and most of those injuries are preventable.

This should never happen, not any more. But it still does. What am I talking about?

Not too long ago it was pretty common for surgeons to mistakenly operate on the wrong leg, wrong arm, wrong eye, etc. But this kind of error got national attention. It outraged the public, including of State hospital regulators. Hospital administrators cracked the whip and made their hospitals and surgery centers adopt more stringent safeguards to prevent this kind of gross error. They started requiring that the part of the body to be operated on be marked with a sharpie. They began asking the patient, before surgery, to confirm which side he was expecting to be operated on. New York surgery malpractice lawyers like us at Michaels Bersani Kalabanka began seeing fewer wrong-side surgery cases.

So a few weeks ago, when I got a call from a guy whose upstate New York surgeon performed his operation on the wrong leg, I asked myself, how could this happen? As I investigated, it became clear why. It seems that the hospital just did not follow the safety protocols. No one bothered asking the patient, before the surgery, which leg he expected to be operated on. No one marked his leg.

Syracuse medical malpractice lawyers are taking note: Upstate University Hospital has a recent demonstrated history of performing botched or erroneous surgeries. The lawyers at Michaels Bersani Kalabanka know this first-hand. We have successfully sued Upstate several times, including a case two years ago which rendered a $2.5 Million verdict to an elderly Parkinson’s patient who was paralyzed and brain damaged due to an avoidable equipment malfunction during brain surgery.

The Syracuse Post Standard now reports that an Upstate University Hospital neurosurgeon was recently suspended after he or she (they won’t disclose the name) made an unnecessary incision. And not just a minor incision. Although the Hospital refused to disclose any further details, anonymous sources say that the unnecessary cut spans almost the entire length of the patient’s back, whereas only a relatively small incision was needed.

This is yet another clear case of Upstate Hospital medical malpractice. And it’s the third time since 2004 that Upstate doctors have blundered by cutting patients in wrong place, a totally avoidable error. In the other two cases, Upstate surgeons made an incision on the wrong side of a baby’s head when attempting to operate on his brain and they operated on the wrong side of a patient in attempting to remove a tumor from an adrenal gland.

Watch this video of a doctor’s lecture on “Medpage”. He tells his fellow medical doctors how to avoid getting sued for medical malpractice. Some of his points are well taken. For example, “Care deeply about your patients”, and “communicate” well and often with them. (It’s harder to sue someone you like!).

We at Michaels Bersani Kalabanka, as Syracuse New York medical malpractice lawyers, have some trouble with his last point: “At the end of the day, recognize that the American system of dealing with medical professional liability, so called malpractice, sucks, that stuff (so to speak) happens, and that many trial lawyers are the scum of sub-humankind.”

Actually, what really sucks is the medical establishment’s way of dealing with medical malpractice — ignore it, downplay it, and, of course, blame the lawyers — as this doctor does here. That’s been their modus operandi for many years now. Oh yeah, and I forgot – they also spend more time and money lobbying for malpractice reform than they spend trying to devise systems to prevent malpractice.

The Syracuse Post Standard reports today that the “central line” blood stream infection rate at the surgical intensive care unit of Upstate University Hospital fell to zero last year only a year after it had one of the highest infection rates in the State (8.3%). A “central line” is a tube or catheter inserted in a vein to draw blood or deliver fluids and medications to a patient. Infection can occur when bacteria travel down the tube or catheter and enter the blood stream.

The cause of the decline in the infections? The Hospital initiated an infection prevention program. The new program consisted of a checklist of steps aimed at avoiding infections, ultrasound machines to help place catheters more accurately, and a computer software program that reported daily on infections and their sources.

What spurred Upstate into initiating the aggressive infection prevention program? Its embarrassingly high infection rate in 2008, one of the worst in the State!

Syracuse New York medical malpractice, like medical malpractice everywhere, is by definition avoidable. And any new medical procedure or device that helps avoid such errors is a godsend — especially to the patient who, thanks to the new procedure or device, avoids becoming one of the many victims of medical malpractice.

A new Syracuse-area invention may pave the way for a significant reduction in Syracuse medical malpractice claims, and eventually medical malpractice claims elsewhere. The Syracuse Post Standard reports that Welch Allyn, a Skaneateles-based manufacturer of medical equipment, has brought to market its “electronic vitals documentation system”, which does the work of three machines, by recording (1) oxygen levels, (2) temperature and (3) blood pressure. These vital signs are then automatically stored into the device’s computer, where they can be instantly viewed by other medical personnel from their Blackberries or computers.

This machine avoids the possibility of human error because no one has to handwrite or type the vital signs — the machine automatically records them. Currently, many medical errors occur when nurses or medical professionals handwrite the vitals data incorrectly (or illegibly) on a piece of paper, and then later type the wrong numbers into the computer. Such errors can lead to serious consequences for the patient, including death.