Medical Malpractice

• Medical Malpractice Reform Criticized by W. Va. Supreme Court Justice

  Brooks Schuelke | January 03, 2008 11:15 AM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  Last week, the West Virginia Supreme Court was faced with the question of whether the state's medical malpractice reforms (including damage caps and requirements of pre-suit expert reports) applied to a claim against a hospital for providing contaminated sutures. The court eventually found that the reforms applied. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Larry Starcher railed on the malpractice...

• Physicians' Group Sues the Texas Medical Board

  Brooks Schuelke | December 28, 2007 9:06 AM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  As part of Texas' 2003 tort reform, the Texas Medical Board was given more resources and more powers to police doctors. Where "regulation" through medical malpractice cases decreased, the TMB was supposed to take up the slack to help keep Texans safe. And the TMB started going after doctors. So much so that physicians groups asked legislators to hold hearings on the new TMB enforcement. The...

• A Turn Around In Medical Malpractice Litigation?

  Brooks Schuelke | December 07, 2007 12:22 PM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  Medical malpractice cases are hard, and for the last several years big insurance companies and big businesses have spent millions of dollars to convince the American jurors that a medical malpractice crises exists. As a result, it has been harder for plaintiffs to win medical malpractice cases, and when plaintiffs do win, the damages have been lower. But I have some hope that is changing...

• Doctors Refuse to Report Medical Malpractice

  Brooks Schuelke | December 03, 2007 3:46 PM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  A recent study finds that nearly half of US Doctors fail to report medical malpractice or unethical behavior, even though most agree that such conduct should be reported. From the article:Up to 96 percent of those surveyed said they should report all instances of significant incompetence or medical errors to the hospital clinic or to authorities. The exception was among cardiologists and...

• Worst Nursing Homes in the US

  Brooks Schuelke | December 01, 2007 8:47 AM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  Yesterday, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services released, for the first time, a list of the worst nursing homes in America. According to CMS:Release of the list was prompted by the number of facilities that were consistently providing poor quality of care, yet were periodically instituting enough improvement that they would pass one survey only to fail the next (for many of the same...

• Physicians Should Disclose Gifts From Pharmaceutical Companies

  Brooks Schuelke | November 01, 2007 9:49 AM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  The recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine discusses the controversial issue of pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers of medical devices providing free gifts to physicians that prescribe their products. The article states that 94% of physicians have some type of relationship with the industry. The article best summarized the debate with the following quote:From a policy...

• Emotional Toll of Medical Malpractice

  Brooks Schuelke | October 29, 2007 12:55 PM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  Last Friday's New York Times Health Blog addressed the emotional toll felt by peoples that are the victims of medical malpractice. The entry, which discusses a new article and proposed documentary, states the following:The writers, Dr. Tom Delbanco and Dr. Sigall K. Bell of the Harvard Medical School, note that while the medical community has focused largely on reducing error rates, hospitals...

• Medical Malpractice From Foreign Care?

  Brooks Schuelke | October 09, 2007 1:54 PM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  Yesterday's Miami Herald had an article about a recent trend of American and Canadian citizens seeking medical care in foreign countries, particularly Cuba. The entire article was interesting, but this quote about potential medical malpractice stuck out:René Rodriguez, a Cuban-born physician now living in Miami, thinks Cuba would be a ''lousy place'' to have surgery. ``If anything happens to...

• The Fairness of Medical Malpractice Settlements

  Brooks Schuelke | October 03, 2007 8:44 AM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  Phillip Peters, a professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, has written a new article entitled The Fairness of Malpractice Settlements. Professor Peters looked at the correlation between settlements in medical malpractice claims and the strength of the underlying cases. He concluded:Researchers have studied the settlements that result from thisprocess and their findings...

• Texas Man Sues After Implant of Stolen Bone

  Brooks Schuelke | October 02, 2007 9:50 AM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  In one of the more unusual medical malpractice cases you'll hear about, a North Texas man has filed suit against several companies alleging that a bone implanted in his neck was stolen from a corpse. James Livingston, 44, of Weatherford, does not seek a specific monetary amount in his suit filed in New York last month against Minneapolis-based Medtronic Inc. for fraud and negligence."How can...