Georgia Injury Lawyer Blog

Our Atlanta medical malpractice lawyers have written in the past about the unfairness of damage caps in medical malpractice cases and how they penalize the most severly injured innocent victims of medical malpractice.

Currently before the Georgia Supreme Court is the issue of the constitutionality of the $350,000.00 cap on non-economic damages enacted by the legislature in 2005. A decision is expected any day.

The attorneys who prosecuted that case have prepared a video which explains and details the terrible injuries suffered by their client. While the content is extremely disturbing and may upset some, we recommend that all citizens of this state view the video, so that they may be truthfully educated about the horrors of medical malpractice and the unfairness of caps on damages.

The link is as follows:
http://vimeo.com/9943651

Radiation overdoses are a serious and dangerous problem facing cancer patients throughout the United States. We recently wrote about a New York Times investigation of fatal radiation overdoses at a Florida hospital. Now, a hospital in Missouri has admitted that it overradiated 76 patients over a five year period. The vast majority of the overradiated patients were suffering from brain cancer.

The hospital, CoxHealth in Springfield, Missouri, blamed the errors on powerful new radiation equipment which had been calibrated incorrectly even with a representative of the manufacturer watching as it was done.

According to the hospital, half of all patients undergoing stereotactic radiation therapy were overdosed by about 50 percent after a physicist at the hospital miscalibrated the new equipment and routine checks over the next five years failed to catch the error.

Stereotactic therapy delivers radiation in such high doses that usually only one treatment is required. It is commonly used to treat small tumors in the head.

The overradiations were discovered in September 2009 after a second physicist received training on the equipment and the hospital began questioning whether the machine had been installed correctly in 2004.

In Missouri, like many states, there is little or no government oversight of radiation therapy. However, The FDA has recently announced plans to increase its oversight of medical radiation. Predictably, this proposal is being opposed by many hospitals and manufacturers of radiation equipment.

Notably, the president of the Missouri hospital where these errors occurred urged the FDA to go even further in regulating radiation therapy. His statement was as follows:

“The initiative should be broadened to include regulation of medical radiation therapy as well. We have also learned that the incident here at CoxHealth is, unfortunately, not an isolated occurrence. Rather, similar instances of medical overradiation have occurred at other hospitals throughout the country. Without increased regulation and oversight, these instances of medical overradiation will likely continue.”

Patients have been receiving sometimes fatal radiation overdoses during medical treatments. Our Atlanta medical malpractice attorneys have been aware of this problem for years. The issue was recently highlighted by the news media in several articles. Now, federal regulators are taking note and proposing regulations which will begin requiring manufacturers of high-grade medical imaging machines to include safety controls that prevent patients from receiving excessive radiation doses.

The Food and Drug Administration action will focus on high-tech machines such as CT scanners, which allow doctors to make lifesaving diagnoses, but also expose patients to high doses of cancer-causing radiation. The proposed new regulations are part of a multipronged effort to address reports of acute injuries as well as reduce lifetime exposure to radiation, which has nearly doubled since 1980.

One new proposal will require manufacturers to install safeguards on machines that automatically notify operators if they are using a higher-than-recommended dose. The FDA is also developing best-practice measures that hospitals and imaging centers will have to meet to retain their scanning accreditation.

According to the FDA, the average American's total radiation exposure has nearly doubled in the last three decades, largely due to CT scans and other imaging tests. Medical radiation now accounts for more than half of the population's total radiation exposure.

The FDA action follows investigations of reports of acute overdoses from CT scanning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. More than 250 patients there were exposed to excessive radiation, with many reporting losing hair and skin redness. Since then the FDA has launched investigations into similar problems at two other California hospitals.

CT scans offer a quick, relatively cheap way to get three-dimensional pictures that give an almost surgical view of the body. Doctors use them to evaluate trauma, belly pain, seizures, chronic headaches and other ailments.

However, CT scans carry a higher risk than older scans. One CT chest scan carries as much radiation as nearly 400 chest X-rays.

The FDA's effort will also be directed at excessive radiation exposure from two other types of imaging: nuclear medicine and fluoroscopy. Nuclear medicine involves injecting nuclear particles into the body to diagnose problems with organs. Fluoroscopy uses a continuous X-ray beam to view body parts in real time, such as when giving epidural injections..

Medical malpractice victims in Georgia are not only injured and killed by negligent health care, but are also victimized by the state via caps on so called non-economic damages. In Georgia, the cap limits these damages to $350,00.00.

Many people have pointed out that this is inherently unfair, especially since the most grievously injured victims are penalized to a greater extent. In effect, the legislature, with help of the governor, decreed that if you, or a loved one is retired or too young to have an earning capacity, the value of your life or that of a loved one, is $350,000.00. Of course thiose who are high wage earners, such as many doctors, would be entitled to a higher recovery in the form of lost income.

This grossly unfair law is currently before the Georgia Supreme Court awaiting an opinion. Yesterday, the Illinois Supreme Court struck down a similar law passed by the Illinois legislature 4 years ago.

The court ruled that the caps on pain and suffering and other non-economic damages, $500,000 per case for doctors and $1 million for hospitals are unconstitutional.

The Illinois Supreme Court’s opinion upheld a 2007 ruling by lower court determining that the law violated the Illinois Constitution’s “separation of powers” clause, essentially finding that lawmakers interfered with the right of juries to determine fair damages.

This ruling was the third time the Illinois Supreme Court has quashed limits on medical malpractice awards, having tossed out similar laws in 1976 and 1997.

The case arose from a malpractice lawsuit filed in 2006 by the family of a girl who suffered brain damage during her delivery at an Illinois hospital.

Medical malpractice has been a hot topic for many years and especially now that certain groups are calling for more restrictions on injured parties as part of health care reform. There has been much false and misleading information placed before the public. But, recently, the advocacy group Americans For Insurance Reform addressed the issue by presenting factual data. The conclusions are below:

1. Medical malpractice claims and premiums are a tiny percentage of the total costs of health care in this country.

• Medical malpractice payouts are less than one percent of total U.S. health care costs. All “losses” (verdicts, settlements, legal fees, etc.) have stayed under one percent for the last 18 years. Moreover, medical malpractice premiums are less than one percent of total U.S. health care costs as well. Dropping for nearly two decades, malpractice premiums have stayed below one percent of health care costs. Americans for Insurance Reform, “Think Malpractice is Driving Up Health Care Costs? Think Again,” http://www.insurance-reform.org/pr/AIRhealthcosts.pdf.

• The Congressional Budget Office found that “Malpractice costs account for less than 2 percent of [health care] spending.” Congressional Budget Office, Limiting Tort Liability for Medical Malpractice 1, 6 (Jan. 8, 2004).

2. Medical malpractice cases are a tiny percentage of tort cases filed each year and the vast majority settle without litigation.

•Medical malpractice cases account for only about four percent of tort cases. Examining the Work of State Courts, 2005, A National Perspective from the Court Statistics Project (2006) at 29.

•In the Harvard closed claims study, only fifteen percent of claims were decided by trial verdict. Other research shows that 90 percent of cases are settled without jury trial, with some estimates indicating that the figure is as high as 97 percent. Testimony of Neil Vidmar, Russell M. Robinson, II Professor of Law, Duke Law School before The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, “Hearing on Medical Liability: New Ideas for Making the System Work Better for Patients,” June 22, 2006 at 17.

3. Contrary to popular myth, few injured patients file lawsuits.

•Between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die each year (and 300,000 are injured) due to medical errors in hospitals alone. Yet eight times as many patients are injured as ever file a claim; 16 times as many suffer injuries as receive any compensation. National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, “To Err is Human” (1999); Harvard Medical Practice Study (1990).

•At the highest level, the estimated number of medical injuries (in hospitals and otherwise) is more than one million per year; approximately 85,000 malpractice suits are filed annually. “With about ten times as many injuries as malpractice claims, the only conclusion possible is that injured patients rarely file lawsuits.” David A. Hyman and Charles Silver, “Medical Malpractice Litigation and Tort Reform: It's the Incentives, Stupid,”59 Vand. L. Rev. 1085, 1089 (May 2006) (citing Brian Ostrom, Neal Kauder & Neil LaFontain, Examining the Work of State Courts (2003) at 23).

4. Medical malpractice claims are not “exploding”.

•According to Public Citizen’s analysis of National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) data, between 1991 and 2005, the total number of malpractice payments made on behalf of doctors declined 15.4 percent (with judgments and settlements); the number of malpractice payments per 100,000 Americans dropped more than ten percent. Public Citizen, Congress Watch, The Great Medical Malpractice Hoax: NPDB Data Continue to Show Medical Liability System Produces Rational Outcomes, (January 2007).

5. Medical malpractice payouts are far smaller than commonly believed and are declining.

•According to Public Citizen’s analysis of National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) data, “The average payment for a medical malpractice verdict in 1991 was $284,896. In 2005, the average was $461,524. Adjusting for inflation, however, shows that the average is actually declining. The 2005 average adjusted for inflation is only $260,890 — a decline of 8 percent since 1991.” Public Citizen, Congress Watch, The Great Medical Malpractice Hoax: NPDB Data Continue to Show Medical Liability System Produces Rational Outcomes, (January 2007)

•Public Citizen also found that the total number of malpractice payments made on behalf of doctors, including judgments and settlements, declined 15.4 percent from 2001-2005 (from 16,588 in 2001 to 14,033 in 2005) and “the number of payments per 100,000 people in the U.S. also fell since 2001 – from 5.82 to 4.73 – a decline of 18.6 percent. Since 1991, the number of payments per 100,000 people declined more than 10 percent.”

•Total medical malpractice payouts, for injuries and deaths caused by medical negligence in the nation, have recently hovered between $5 billion and $6 billion annually. This is less than half of what Americans pay for dog and cat food each year. Americans for Insurance Reform, Stable Losses/Unstable Rates, 2007, http://www.insurance-reform.org/StableLosses04.pdf; The Pet Food Institute puts these figures at $13 to $14 billion annually over the past few years. See, http://www.petfoodinstitute.org/reference_pet_data.cfm

Dangerous nurses and healthcare providers may be practicing throughout Georgia. In 1987, Congress ordered federal health officials to create a database of state disciplinary actions against nurses and other health professionals. This database includes the names of those who, among other things, have been found to have committed physical, mental and sexual abuse of patients.

While each state is required to maintain a database, no nationally available database has ben created. When a hospital or temporary agency wants to hire a nurse, there's no easy way to check whether the person has abused a patient or engaged in dangerous conduct elsewhere in the country.

This information was supposed to be added to a database of similar information about doctors which was made available to hospitals and other eligible health employers in 1990. But this has not happened.

As it stands now, only federal and state agencies and health plans, such as HMOs, are allowed access to the information about nurses. Incredibly, hospitals and nursing homes cannot access this critical data.

The federal government has announced that this information should be available on a nationwide basis to hospitals and other health facilities within a year. There is one major obstacle. Many hospitals and healthcare facilities rely on temporary agencies for nursing and other employees. Under the law, temporary agencies would be allowed to search a nurse's background only if they were designated as agents of particular hospitals or other facility. It is anticipated that these institutions will be unwilling to designate multiple staffing firms as their agents.

Unfortunately, while these problems are being debated by government officials, many innocent patients may become victims of dangerous perpetrators whose proclivities are known to the government, but unavailable to the very institutions which hire them and place them in positions of trust. This is an outrageous situation which must be corrected immediately. One can only hope that the government officials charged with this duty will take it seriously and proceed with the greatest of speed.

Medical malpractice is a serious problem in Georgia and the United States. While limits on recoveries for innocent victims is being pushed by large insurance companies, there are many issues that are being ignored. One is the lack of information available to the public about incompetent doctors and hospitals.

More than 20 years ago, Congress created a federal database to track incompetent and unprofessional health-care practitioners. The database, compiled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, includes some 460,000 records of malpractice lawsuits whose judgments total $69.7 billion. It includes information on 23,788 patient deaths, 8,100 major permanent injuries and 3,896 cases that resulted in quadriplegics, brain damage or lifelong care.

This is information that is critical to patients selecting doctors and hospitals. However, much of the data is closed to the public. Although the full database is open to hospitals, managed care organizations and state licensing agencies, the public can view only limited information, such as the lawsuit's allegation and the patient's health. The doctors' names remain hidden.

For years, the American Medical Association, an organization supposedly having patient welfare as one of its purposes, has argued that the data bank should remain closed to the public.

Dr. Sidney Wolfe, is a physician and director of the Health Research Group for Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. He argues that this information is crucial for the public and that efforts to suppress it are merely intended to protect doctors.

He points out that in the state of Oklahoma alone, the data contains among other things, 28 lawsuits concerning a procedure on a wrong body part with a total of $2.9 million in payments, nine suits concerning sexual misconduct for a total of $166,000 in payments, and three suits concerned assault and battery.

This is information that the public needs to have. Without it, you or a loved one may be unknowingly treated by a doctor who is incompetent or has criminally assaulted a patient.

As Congress debates providing and paying for health care, another huge "cost" must not be forgotten: the cost of medical errors and medical negligence.

According to conservative estimates, 98,000 Americans annually die because of preventable medical negligence. Many more suffer life-changing injuries.

A terrific website, 98,000 Reasons, describes many of these stories of preventable injuries and deaths. Please visit it, as reducing medical errors saves innocent lives, and reduces costs of health care.

Medical malpractice has long been condoned if perpetrated against a service member. Now, in an effort to rectify this grossly unfair situation involving those serving their country, members of the House Judiciary Committee forwarded a bill to the full House of Representatives which would permit servicemembers to sue the military in certain cases of medical malpractice.

While this is a step in the right direction, it appears doubtful the full House and Senate (a companion bill, sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer, is working through the Senate) will take action to pass this bill. The bill would allow civil lawsuits against military doctors in cases of clear medical negligence, something that's currently prohibited under federal law.

The current prohibition on servicemembers is based upon the Feres Doctrine, a legal precedent from the 1947 death of active-duty soldier Lt. Rudolph Feres who was killed in a barracks fire. His widow sued the Army for negligence, claiming the facility had a defective heating plant and substandard fire safety controls. But the Supreme Court ruled that servicemembers performing military duties do not fall under federal rules allowing lawsuits against the government.

The House bill is named for Carmelo Rodriguez, a Marine Corps sergeant who died in January 2007 after battle with skin cancer. Military doctors first diagnosed the cancer 10 years earlier, but a series of military doctors failed to warn him of the lillness for nearly eight years. When his family tried to sue to force changes in medical notifications, the courts turned them away.

Critics of Hinchey's bill say the measure opens the door for time-consuming, frivolous lawsuits and will discourage potential recruits from joining the military.

But in a statement yesterday, the American Association for Justice called the proposal a basic issue of fairness.

“Currently, the law unfairly treats our brave servicemen and women as second-class citizens,” said Anthony Tarricone, president of the association. “But this legislation would restore their basic legal rights and protect them from injuries they receive as a result of preventable medical errors.”

The Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP have represented many clients who have sustained serious injuries as a result of falling in hospitals, nursing homes and extended care facilities. Patients who are long term residents in skilled nursing facilities are by definition in a compromised state of health, usually from multiple chronic medical problems. These patients are often weak, are subject to lightheaded spells, become confused and have significant deficiencies of mobility and balance. Falling, sometimes frequent falling is thus a common occurrence for these patients. The consequence of these events can range from simple, inconsequential bruising to severe complications such as broken bones to intracranial hemorrhages. Furthermore, even relatively simple additional stresses imposed on an already debilitated state can have long term effects on a patient's overall medical condition over and above the specific effects of the fall itself. For example, it is well known that such patients who sustain a fractured hip have much higher 6 month mortality even after the fracture has healed and baseline mobility has been re-established. Although skilled nursing facilities and other medical providers are well aware of the risks to elderly patients who fall, they are often negligent in a variety of ways, including failing to adopt safety measures to protect patients.
If your loved on has been injured as a result of the negligence of a nursing home or other skilled nursing facility, contact the experienced Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP at (800) 228-9159.

Everyday patients fall in Georgia nursing homes. Our Atlanta attorneys have successfully tried cases against nursing homes and other skilled care facilities in which patients have suffered severe injuries due to preventable falls.

Patients who are in long term nursing homes are by definition in a compromised state of health, usually from multiple chronic medical problems. These patients are often weak, are subject to lightheaded spells, become confused and have significant deficiencies of mobility and balance. Falling is a common occurrence for these patients. The consequence of these events can range from simple, inconsequential bruising to severe complications such as broken bones to severe head injuries.

Even relatively simple additional stresses imposed on an already weak person can have long term and devastating effects on a patient's overall medical condition. It is a fact that such patients who sustain a fractured hip have a much higher 6 month death rate even after the fracture has healed.

Patients in these facilities suffer from a variety of conditions which make them risks for falling.

These include:

1. Dementia associated with "sundowner" syndrome. Commonly, a patient wakes up in the middle of the night, not knowing where he or she is, experience a drop in blood pressure from arising too quickly, have a momentary dizzy spell or loss of consciousness and fall.

2. Visual disturbance where a patient cannot see well enough.

3. A history of stroke associated with weakness, partial paralysis and loss of balance.

4. Multiple medications that cause drops in blood pressure, medications which cause sleepiness and confusion, and diabetic medications which cause low blood sugars

Of course there are also environmental factors which can lead to falls. These include such things as slippery floors, uneven surfaces, poor lighting, and improperly place rails.
Many times simple precautions can prevent these tragic falls, such as anti-skid strips around beds and bathrooms. Beds should be lowered at night and bed rails raised. Mobility and balance evaluations are important methods of assessing individual risks and point to specific, patient- oriented interventions.

Amid the debate over so called medical malpractice reform, the rights of patients seem to be getting sacrificed for the profit of large insurance companies. A recent report from California demonstrates why the right of patients to redress in courts cannot be curtailed.

According to published reports the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) recently issued administrative penalties to 11 California hospitals, each of which has been "fined $25,000 for alleged regulation violations that caused injury or death to patients. The violations included failures in care, such as leaving sponges or other surgical tools inside patients and failures in communication between hospital departments or inadequate nurse training.

All of the hospitals must submit a plan of correction to the state, which outlines how the violations would be avoided in the future. The hospitals also have the right to appeal the citations within 10 days.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune since state health officials started assessing the penalties in 2007, they have found that medication mixups and surgical objects left in patients' bodies are the most common errors. Those two categories account for more than half of all 'immediate jeopardy' mistakes reported by hospitals in California.

The Los Angeles Times reported that USC University Hospital was fined after mixing up two patients' test results, mistakenly telling a patient with a broken leg that he had cancer in August 2007 and unnecessarily amputating his leg. The hospital was also fined $30,300 for failing to report the incident, but hospital officials have appealed that fine. Tenet Health Corp. sold the hospital to the university in April, and state officials emphasized that the fine was against Tenet, not the university.

According to the San Francisco Business Times, Sutter Health's Alta Bates/Summit Medical Center in the East Bay was fined because staff left a ring sizer in a patient's heart during surgery late last year. The ring sizer was left in the patient's heart on Dec. 11, 2008 and discovered until Dec. 22 when the patient received a CT scan to determine why he had breathing problems. The ring was removed Dec. 25, but the patient suffered more complications following that procedure, including kidney failure.

A surgery technician told state investigators he noticed the ring sizer was missing from its handle before he was relieved for a lunch break. Nothing was said about it when he returned from lunch, so he assumed it had been found.

Georgia nursing homes have been the subject of many investigations finding negligence and abuse in the care of the elderly and infirm. A new report has disclosed troubling information. A government program that brings extra scrutiny to poorly performing nursing homes leaves out hundreds of troubled facilities.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services identifies up to 136 nursing homes as "special focus facilities" subject to more frequent inspections because of their living conditions. In every state except Alaska, there are between one and six such facilities. But investigators have found that four times as many homes, or 580, could be considered among the nation's worst.

The report from the Government Accountability Office does not identify the homes.
The GAO recommended that the program be expanded two years ago. But, federal officials while agreeing with the concept, said they didn't have the resources to do so.

The GAO report which is being released Monday, also recommends adjusting the methods used to identify the worst performing nursing homes. The homes now under special attention are the worst performing in their state. But not all states are equal when it comes to nursing home quality. Comparing the homes nationally, as recommended, would ensure that scarce resources go to inspecting the nursing homes that truly need the most attention, according to the report.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told the GAO they disagreed with relying solely on a national comparison. The agency said it would consider an approach that allows for a national comparison to have more weight.

Some states have far more poorly performing nursing homes than are designated as special focus facilities. For example, Indiana had 52 nursing homes listed as among the worst performing, but only four are on the special list; California has 40 considered among the worst performing, but only four are on the list.

Ohio has five nursing homes on the special focus list but only three that investigators considered among the nation's worst.

Investigators also found that the worst-performing ones tend to be for-profit facilities affiliated with a chain of nursing homes. They are more likely to be a larger facility, averaging 102 residents, while other nursing homes not identified as among the worst had 89 residents on average

The Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP have written before about the draconian “tort reform” laws enacted by the Georgia legislature in recent years. Most Georgia citizens have no idea what their elected politicians have done to deprive them of their right to be made whole if injured or killed as a result of a doctor’s negligence. A recent case demonstrates what could happen in Georgia. The Denton Record-Chronicle reports that a Denton County Texas jury has ordered a hospital, a doctor and a physician’s assistant to pay $3.5 million the family of a woman who died of mis-diagnosed cancer. According to the article, the victim was 33 years old when she noticed a small bump on the right crown of her head. She visited the doctor who told her that the bump was a sebaceous cyst, a non-malignant lesion. A week later, the doctor’s PA removed the cyst and discarded it instead of sending it to a lab for testing. A year later it returned and the woman went to a different doctor. Fearing that it was a malignant sarcoma, the second doctor removed it and sent it off for testing. The test confirmed the suspected diagnosis and the woman died within a year. Texas caps on awards in medical cases will reduce the size of the award to $1.5 million. Given the fact that the married victim lost her life and left a husband, a two year old and a nine month old child behind, the $1.5 million that her family will receive is pitifully small but under Georgia law they would receive even less. Georgia law limits non-economic damages in a medical malpractice wrongful death case to $250,000.00.

Losing a loved one as a result of a medical providers failure to properly and timely diagnose cancer i.e. medical malpractice, is very difficult. The Georgia injury law firm of Finch McCranie, LLP have over 40 years experience pursuing wrongful death lawsuits. If you have lost a loved one and feel you have a wrongful death claim, call our experienced attorneys at 1 (800) 228-9159 for a free consultation.

The current health care debate has been expoited by large insurance companies and certain doctor groups to advance limits on their exposure for what are often preventable errors which many times leave innocent people maimed or dead. The Lexington Kentucky Herald-Leader has published an article exposing the falsehoods these groups are presenting to the public in an effort to simply increase their profits. This article is so important and factual that it is reprinted below:

Tort reform doesn't cut health costs. Sen. Mitch McConnell's No. 1 idea for fixing what ails our health care system is to limit the rights of those maimed by medical malpractice.

But states that have enacted curbs on what McConnell calls "junk lawsuits" have yet to see the cost savings promised by McConnell and other proponents of tort reform.

On the contrary, Texas capped malpractice damages in 2003 only to experience a steep rise in health insurance premiums and medical costs.

Medicare spending rose 24 percent in the three years after punitive damages were capped at $250,000, according to the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy.

One of the most expensive health-care markets in the country is the Texas city of McAllen. Only Miami, which has much higher labor and living costs, spends more per person on Medicare.

Boston surgeon Atul Gawande visited McAllen and wrote an account for The New Yorker, "The Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care" that's required reading for anyone trying to understand this admittedly baffling topic.

One night at dinner with six local doctors he asked why the average cost per Medicare enrollee had soared from $4,891, about the national average in 1992, to almost twice the national average of $15,000 per enrollee in 2006.

For perspective, the per capita income in McAllen is only $12,000.

Several of the physicians said doctors practiced defensive medicine to protect themselves from the city's especially aggressive lawyers; they ordered extra tests and procedures which drive up costs.

But what about the strict limits on malpractice damages. Haven't lawsuits gone down?

"Practically to zero," one of the docs said.

What's finally revealed is that doctors in McAllen are heavily invested in medical technology and imaging and surgery centers. They order lots of tests and procedures because they directly profit from them. They think of what they do as a business.

The critical choice facing this country is whether health care will continue to go the way of McAllen or whether it can be guided toward a Mayo Clinic model in which doctors work together to deliver the best care with the fewest tests and procedures.

We should all hope the Mayo model wins because the outcomes for patients are far better. Also, at the current rate, health care costs will soon eat up so much of the federal budget that this country will no longer be able to afford to defend itself.

The Texas experience with malpractice is not unique. Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham surveyed 27 states that have limits on non-economic damages and discovered no savings for health care consumers.

McConnell is offering a few other of what he calls "common sense" ideas. He favors some insurance reforms, such as covering pre-existing conditions, and incentives for living a healthful lifestyle.

He also says individuals buying insurance should be entitled to the same tax deductions as companies buying insurance for their employees.

McConnell acknowledges that health care reform is necessary, but his prescription is mostly a placebo.

Georgia injury lawyers representing victims of medical malpractice are still disheartened about the so-called “tort reform” that the Georgia Legislature has enacted in the last two or three years. Most Georgia citizens have no idea that they have given virtual immunity to Georgia emergency room physicians. If you are a patient in a Georgia hospital emergency room and you are seriously injured or meet your death as a result of an emergency room doctor’s negligence or medical malpractice, you cannot sue the doctor or the hospital for damages “unless it is proven clear and convincing evidence that that the physician or health care provider’s actions showed gross negligence”. In Georgia if you are lucky enough to make it out of the emergency room and you are injured or die as a result of medical malpractice committed elsewhere, you are limited to a recovery of $250,000.00 in non-economic damages thanks to the good work of conservative Georgia legislators looking out for big business at the expense of Georgia citizens.

Recently, a Virginia jury awarded $4 million to a woman whose heart condition was misdiagnosed by an emergency room physician in Virginia. According to the lawsuit, the woman was forced to undergo a heart transplant as a result of the misdiagnosis. The condition could have been treated with medication had it been caught early enough, according to the victim’s lawyer. The award was later reduced to $1.8 million which is the cap on medical-related damages in Virginia. If she had been in Georgia, it is likely the woman would have no case whatsoever under Georgia law because the doctor’s negligence/malpractice was committed while she was a patient in the emergency room.

The Georgia medical malpractice lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP have many years of experience in medical malpractice cases and we are committed to providing personal service and to obtaining fair compensation for all of our clients. Call us at 1-800-228-9159 for a free consultation

Many servicemembers and dependents reside in Georgia. While servicemembers can receive care at military hospitals they have no rights if they are the victim of malpractice, no matter how egregious. The Feres Doctrine, named after a 1950 Supreme Court decision, grants complete immunity to military health care professionals who commit malpractice upon service members. Service members who have sacrificed for their country and become victims of malpractice are left to suffer the consequences with no recourse.

This injustice has again come to light in the case of a 20-year-old Air Force serviceman who was reported to be in critical condition at the University of California Davis Medical Center on Monday, after losing both legs in what has been described as complications from routine gallbladder surgery.

The gall bladder surgery was performed at Travis Air Force Base. The Air Force would only comment that a "serious medical incident" occurred at its David Grant Medical Center on July 9 and is being investigated by the base, a national hospital accrediting commission and the U.S. Surgeon General.

The airman’s wife reported that he was supposed to get his gallbladder removed laparoscopically at the Travis hospital. Instead, a device being threaded into his belly nicked or punctured the aorta, the large artery that carries blood from the heart throughout the body.

Surgeons opened his abdomen and were able to repair the breach well enough to save his life, but in the process or afterward, something disrupted the blood supply to his legs. The airman’s wife said she was told the aorta was sewn together incompletely and began leaking.

According to reports, when the surgeons restored the blood supply to the iliac vessels, the legs were so badly swollen and damaged that blood circulated only down to the knees, leaving dead tissue below.

The Airman was then traansferred to the University of California Davis Medical Center where he underwent surgeries that removed first the lower-right leg, then the lower-left and more of the right.

The Airman’s wife also questions the over nine hours that passed from the initial surgical error until her husband was flown to UC Davis Medical Center. She wonders if his legs could have been saved had he been moved more quickly.

However, irrespective of any negligence on the part of the military surgeons or other healthcare professionals, this serviceman has no rights to seek recourse for his injuries.

Georgia injury lawyers know that a medical providers failure to diagnose a condition or even mis-diagnose a condition can, and often does, result in the wrongful death of a patient.

A Tennessee state court jury has awarded nearly $24 million to a woman in what is one of the largest medical malpractice verdicts ever in the state of Tennessee. The lawsuit alleged her doctor failed to diagnose a lump that she complained about over the course of 18 months. The lump turned out to be breast cancer.

The Georgia medical malpractice lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP have many years of experience in medical malpractice cases and we are committed to providing personal service and to obtaining fair compensation for all of our clients. Call us at 1-800-228-9159 for a free consultation.

Now that the Obama administration is proposing health care reform, big insurance companies and some doctors associations are attempting to graft so called "tort reform" into the legislation. Georgia residents are already faced with a very restrictive system which affords doctors, hospitals, and other health care professionals with extraordinary protections against lawsuits. Even in the worst cases of malpractice victims are restircted to a recovery for non economic damages of no more than $350,000.00.

The New York Times today ran an excellent guest editorial regarding medical malpractice reform by Tom Baker, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. It is posted below:

OUR medical liability system needs reform. But anyone who thinks that limiting liability would reduce health care costs is fooling himself. Preventable medical injuries, not patient compensation, are what ring up extra costs for additional treatment. This means taxpayers, employers and everyone else who buys health insurance — all of us — have a big stake in patient safety.

Eighty percent of malpractice claims involve significant disability or death, a 2006 analysis of medical malpractice claims conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health shows, and the amount of compensation patients receive strongly depends on the merits of their claims. Most people injured by medical malpractice do not bring legal claims, earlier studies by the same researchers have found.

On the other hand, medical liability has improved patient safety — by leading hospitals to hire risk managers, for example, and spurring anesthesiologists to improve their safety standards and practices. Even medical societies’ efforts to attack the liability system have helped, by inspiring the research that has documented the surprising extent of preventable injuries in hospitals. That research helped start the patient safety movement.

When it comes to rising medical costs, liability is a symptom, not the disease. Getting rid of liability might save money for hospitals and some high-risk specialists, but it would cost society more by taking away one of the few hard-wired patient safety incentives.

Besides, there’s a better answer for doctors worried about high malpractice insurance premiums.

Critics point to defensive medicine as the hidden burden that liability imposes on health care. Yet research shows that while the fear of liability changes doctors’ behavior, that isn’t necessarily a burden. Some defensive medicine is, like defensive driving, good practice. Too often, we can’t distinguish between treatments that are necessary and those that are wasteful. Better research on what works and what doesn’t — evidence-based medicine — will help. And it will address the more general challenge of avoiding costly but unnecessary care.

Just as we need evidence-based medicine, we also need evidence-based medical liability reform. The research shows, overwhelmingly, that the real problem is too much malpractice, not too many malpractice lawsuits. So medical providers should be required to disclose injuries, provide quicker compensation to deserving patients and — here’s the answer for doctors worried about their premiums — shift the responsibility for buying malpractice insurance to hospitals and other large medical institutions. Evidence-based liability reform would give these institutions the incentive they need to cut back on the most wasteful aspect of American health care: preventable medical injuries.

A study released by Public Citizen found that medical malpractice payments were at or near record lows in 2008, but suggests the decline almost certainly indicates that a lower percentage of injured patients received compensation, not that health safety has improved.

Medical malpractice is so common, and litigation over it so rare, that between three and seven Americans die from medical errors for every one who receives a payment for any malpractice claim, according to Public Citizen’s analysis of medical malpractice payment data and the best available patient safety estimates.

For the third straight year, 2008 saw the lowest number of medical malpractice payments since the federal government's National Practitioner Data Bank began tracking such data in 1990. The 11,037 payments in 2008 were 30.7 percent lower than the average number of payments recorded by the NPDB in all previous years.

Ratios of payments per capita and per physician have fallen even lower compared with historical norms. There were 13.5 payments per million physicians in 2006 (the most recent year for which the number of physicians is available), which is 29.2 percent lower than the average in previous years.

The cost of the medical malpractice liability system -- if measured broadly by adding all malpractice insurance premiums -- fell to less than 0.6 percent of the $2.1 trillion in total national health care costin 2006, the most recent year for which the necessary data to make such comparisons are available.

The cost of actual malpractice payments fell to 0.18 percent -- one-fifth of 1 percent -- of all health care costs in 2006. Annual malpractice payments have subsequently fallen from $3.9 billion in 2006 to $3.6 billion in 2008, but comparative data on total health care costs are not available.

"Any way you measure it, medical liability accounts for less than 1 percent 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. "These are people who died or were left with serious permanent injuries -- out of work, with enormous medical costs for the rest of their lives -- and they and their families are getting nothing from the doctors and hospitals responsible."

The amount paid out for medical malpractice generally goes to patients with the most serious injuries. More than 80 percent of the money paid out for medical malpractice in 2008 was for cases involving "significant permanent injuries"; "major permanent injuries"; injuries resulting in quadriplegia, brain damage or the need for permanent care; or death, according to NPDB reporting.

Despite the hysteria surrounding debates over medical malpractice litigation, experts have repeatedly concluded that several times as many patients suffer avoidable injuries as those who sue.

The best known such finding was included in the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) 1999 study, "To Err Is Human," which concluded that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die every year because of avoidable medical errors.
Fewer than 15,000 people (including those with non-fatal outcomes) received compensation for medical malpractice that year, and in 2008, the number receiving compensation fell to just over 11,000.

There is no evidence that there are fewer errors today. The Joint Commission, which accredits hospitals, learned about 116 occasions in which surgeons operated on the wrong part of a patient’s body in 2008 and 71 times in which foreign objects were left inside patients’ bodies. Health experts call these "never events," meaning that they simply should not happen at all.