Secrecy Shields Medical Mishaps From Public View

According to a national investigation by Hearst Newspapers, many hospitals are still failing to report medical errors even after a report issued in 1999 outlined the need for reforms. The report, written by 22 physicians, called for improvements in patient safety and a nationwide system to track hospital errors. The newspaper's investigation found that ten years after the report many hospitals have been slow to institute change and lobby groups have fought against a national registry for hospital errors. San Francisco Chronicle

Errors Common In Cancer Diagnosis

It’s hard enough battling cancer, but a new report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Vol 25, No 31 (November 1), 2007: pp. 5009-5018 maintains that doctors make diagnosis errors in more than one in ten cases of the disease. The report says in many of these cases, the error resulted in significant harm.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh say, until now, not much has been written or studied on cancer misdiagnosis. In particular, doctors have not had a good grasp of how common the problem is and what impact it has had on patient health.
When the research team looked at diagnosis mistakes among cancer patients at four hospitals, they found the frequency of errors ranged from 1.79 percent to 9.42 percent for gynecological cases and from 4.87 percent to 11.8 percent for other cases. They found that some errors were significantly linked to particular hospitals but did not name them.
The report said nearly half the mistakes were caused by misinterpreting test results, while the rest were mostly attributable to poor sampling of tissue.
The researchers said they found a significant number of the errors, nearly half , had traumatic consequences for the patient. Harm from the errors ranged from putting the patient through unnecessary tests, to losing a limb, to death.
The authors of the study say they compiled the research in an effort to help those who want to standardize cancer diagnostic and treatment methods.

Huge Medical Malpractice Study: Damage Limits Not Warranted

Americans for Insurance Reform released a study earlier this week showing that in recent years, doctor premiums and medical malpractice claims have overwhelmingly dropped, while the profits of the medical malpractice insurance industry have soared. Significantly, the study concludes that placing further limits on the liability of negligent doctors and unsafe hospitals would be unjustifiable, and would put almost no dent in our country’s health care costs.
AIR’s report, True Risk: Medical Liability, Malpractice Insurance and Health Care, is by Gillian Cassell-Stiga and Joanne Doroshow of the Center for Justice & Democracy, and actuary J. Robert Hunter, who is Director of Insurance for the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), former Commissioner of Insurance for the State of Texas, and former Federal Insurance Administrator under Presidents Carter and Ford.

In describing the study’s findings, Hunter said, “Thirty years of inflation-adjusted data show that medical malpractice premiums are the lowest they have been in this entire period. This is in no small part due to the fact that claims have fallen like a rock, down 45 percent since 2000. The periodic premium spikes we see in the data are not related to claims but to the economic cycle of insurers and to drops in investment income. Since prices have not declined as much as claims have, medical malpractice insurer profits are higher than the rest of the property casualty industry, which has been remarkably profitable over the last five years. -AIR

The findings apply equally to states that have placed major tort restrictions on victims of medical malpractice and to states that have not.

The study adds that because medical malpractice premiums amount to less than 0.5% of overall health care costs, with medical malpractice claims amounting to 0.2% (yes, these are tiny decimals) of health care costs, limiting liability any more will simply not have a significant effect on these health care costs. “If Congress completely eliminated every single medical malpractice lawsuit,” it says, “including all legitimate cases, as part of health care reform, overall health care costs would hardly change, but the costs of medical error and hospital-induced injury would remain and someone else would have to pay.”

All of this only confirms that removing or further limiting medical liability would mean robbing patients of the only meaningful check and balance they have on the impossible monstrosity of a system that American health care has become. Limiting liability is not a way to save the country money, and it’s not fair for patients who are wrongfully injured or who lose their lives due to negligence.
Read AIR’s full study here.

Malpractice Payouts Fall Across the Country

Medical malpractice payouts continued to fall across the country last year and account for a minuscule portion of health-care costs, the watchdog group Public Citizen reports.

Using data from the federal government's National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), the group found the number of payouts declined for the third straight year. In addition, the 11,037 payments recorded in 2008 were 31% fewer than the average number of payments recorded by the NPDB in all previous years.

That doesn't mean safety efforts have been successful, the report asserts. “There is no evidence that medical errors have declined. Rather than pointing to safer medical care, the reduction almost certainly means that there are ever more malpractice victims not receiving compensation.”

The cost of the malpractice liability system, measured broadly by adding all malpractice insurance premiums, fell to less than 0.6% of the $2.1 trillion in total national health-care costs in 2006, the most recent data available, according to the Public Citizen analysis. The cost of actual malpractice payments fell to less than one-fifth of 1% of all health-care costs in 2006.

Public Citizen doubts national tort reform will have much impact on spiraling health costs. “Any way you measure it, medical liability accounts for less than 1% of the country's health-care costs, and the vast majority of victims receive no compensation whatsoever,” said David Arkush, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch Division.Click here for the full report.

CAPS ON DAMAGES IN MEDICAL MALPRACTICE CASES HARM PATIENTS AND DO NOT REDUCE PREMIUMS

In 1975, the California Legislature past a law known as MICRA, which among other things limits the compensation (damages) a victim of medical malpractice or their surviving family may obtain to $250,000.00 for non-economic damages for pain and suffering, or in the case of the death of a family member for loss of love and affection. These human damages are the real loss victims and their family members suffer when a doctor is negligent. There are no similar limitations on damages for injuries due to any other type of negligence in California.
Studies have shown that these caps on damages harm victims and do not reduce the premiums doctors pay for medical malpractice insurance. www.weissratings.com/malpractice.asp
The MICRA caps have never been increased for inflation. The $250,000.00 limit in 1975 dollars is now the equivalent of about $61, 383.00 in 2009 dollars.
The tragic consequences of the MICRA limitations are seen first hand in the award winning video, “The Truth about MICRA”. http://www.caoc.com/CA/index.cfm?event=showPage&pg=micravideo
For more information about the unfair MICRA limits and what you can do about them contact California Medical Malpractice Lawyer Steven Weinberg 888-321-1022, or visit his website at www.sjweinberglaw.com.

Emergency Room Errors

An astounding 115 million people in America are treated in emergency rooms every year, according to a 2007 statistic released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Journal of the American Medical Association has reported that more than 225,000 people die every year as a result of medical malpractice with emergency room errors accounting for almost half of those numbers.
An emergency room errors can mean the difference between life and death or prolonged illness and a speedy recovery. Emergency room nurses and physicians are responsible for diagnosing injuries and medical conditions accurately. When their negligent mistakes cause injury, illness or death, the injured person or the family will need help obtaining resources, information and support.
Steven Weinberg, California Medical Malpractice Lawyer has the experience and expertise to determine if a patient’s emergency treatment was delayed or incorrect, and if emergency room malpractice resulted in an injury for which damages may be recovered. Call us for an evaluation at no cost to you. 888-321-1022, or visit our website, www.sjweinberglaw.com.

Study shows doctors errors do cause injuries to patients

According to a two-year old report in the Annals of Internal Medicine, physician errors are a factor in about 60% of medical malpractice claims that involved patients allegedly injured because of missed or delayed diagnoses.
For the study, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston reviewed 307 claims from four large malpractice insurers that were closed between 1984 and 2004.
181 of the claims involved diagnostic errors that allegedly injured patients; and ignored the outcomes of the claims.
Although most of the claims involved several factors, the major ones involved physician errors.
The Results
According to the study:
100 claims involved failure to order appropriate diagnostic tests;
81 claims involved failure to establish a plan for appropriate follow-up care;
76 claims involved failure to obtain an adequate H&P or PE;
67 claims involved improper interpretation of diagnostic tests.
Contributing Factors
The main factors that contributed to the physician errors included failures in judgment (79%), memory problems (59%), lack of knowledge (48%), patient-related issues (46%) and patient handoffs from other physicians (20%).
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