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Personal Injury Law

Chicago Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog

By Hurley, McKenna & Mertz

Post Frequency: 0.8/day

Last Entry: March 29, 2011 at 14:34:18

Colorado: Surgery Tech suspected of exposing 5,700 to Hepatitis C

Posted on July 16, 2009
The Colorado Spring Gazette (7/2) reports, ?Federal officials Thursday warned that about 5,700 surgery patients, including 1,000 at a Colorado Springs surgery center, are at risk of having been infected by an operating room technician with hepatitis C,? because the surgery tech admitted to swapping her dirty syringes filled with saline for syringes filled with Feltanyl, a narcotic that is 100 times stronger than morphine...

Elderly Patients: The Patients Doctors Don?t Know

Posted on July 16, 2009
Rosanne M. Leipsig, a physician and professor of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, published an article in the New York Times (7/1) commenting on the fact that ?American medical schools require no training in geriatric medicine,? even though elderly patients make up a substantial component of all patients for which graduating doctors will care...

Illinois Lasik doctor still practicing despite wealth of lawsuits

Posted on July 10, 2009
Hurley, McKenna & Mertz settles many medical malpractice cases each year. The following situation is upsetting, in my opinion, because Chicago area ophthalmologist, Dr. Nicholas Caro, is still practicing despite upwards of 50 medical malpractice suits and a year-old recommendation from the Illinois chief medical prosecutor that the Lasik surgeon have his license revoked (Chicago Tribune, Shelton 7/6)...

Brooklyn hospital staff falsified records to hide neglect

Posted on July 07, 2009
The Washington Post reports (AP, 6/20), ?staff members at a Brooklyn hospital falsified medical records and lied to authorities in an attempt to cover up the neglect of a patient who died on the waiting room floor.? Esmin Green, age 49, suffered for almost 24 hours in a psychiatric emergency room at the Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York before collapsing from a blood clot...

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FDA seizes generic drugs at Michigan facilities and calls on experts to discuss how to limit liver injury in patients who take acetaminophen

Posted on July 01, 2009
As a personal injury lawyer, I am pleased to see that the FDA has been proactive in considering health hazards from generic drugs. Consider two recent instances where the FDA has both seized drugs for violating manufacturing standards and called for a panel of experts to scrutinize the link between acetaminophen and liver injury...

University of Wisconsin requires physicians to divulge outside income

Posted on June 29, 2009
The impact that drug and medical device companies may have on physician treatment decisions is a cause for concern. Creating incentives for physicians to use a certain company?s devices or drugs may jeopardize patient care. As a medical malpractice lawyer in Chicago, I support the University of Wisconsin policy that requires physicians to divulge outside income...

Massachusetts General residents doctors not getting enough sleep

Posted on June 23, 2009
As a Chicago medical malpractice lawyer, I support restrictions on the hours that residents can work. Resident doctors need to be well rested in order to learn and adequately perform complicated surgical procedures, and consequences of overworking residents could be fatal for patients...

"Rogue" VA cancer unit reportedly botched 92 of 116 procedures

Posted on June 23, 2009
At Hurley, McKenna, & Mertz, we have argued many cases of institutional negligence. Institutional negligence occurs when a hospital, nursing home, ?surgicenter? or other health care facility violates its independent duty to act reasonably in providing care to patients, and in supervising the provision of that care in the facility, resulting in injury to a patient...

Medical device maker accused of improper marketing

Posted on June 18, 2009
The New York Times (6/16) reports ?a medical device maker, Synthes Inc., and four of its executives were indicted Tuesday on federal charges that they improperly promoted a bone filler for purposes not approved by the Food and Drug Administration including encouraging its use in what prosecutors called ?unauthorized? human trials...

AAJ Response to President Obama?s Comments at the AMA

Posted on June 16, 2009
American Association for Justice President Les Weisbrod issued a statement following President Obama?s comments (6/15). Mr. Weisbrod agreed that ?it?s clear America?s health care system is in crisis. Over 40 million people are without health insurance and costs are skyrocketing...

Illinois Attorney General sues Crestwood for lying over tainted water

Posted on June 11, 2009
The Chicago Tribune (6/10, Hawthorne) reports that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan ?filed a civil lawsuit Tuesday that accuses Crestwood officials of lying more than 120 times about their secret use of a [Chicago area] community well contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals...

Study shows that growth in Medical Malpractice claims is exaggerated

Posted on June 09, 2009
A blog on the New York Times (6/6) website discusses the different points of view on the medical malpractice ?crisis?. Jeremy Peters wrote, "For years?health care lobbyists have argued that the exceedingly high cost of medical malpractice insurance was a result of a runaway legal system that allowed juries to award huge judgments to victims of doctors' mistakes...

Questions about new Hip Resurfacing Procedure attract attention

Posted on June 05, 2009
In 2006, the hip resurfacing procedure became available in the United States. Since that time, some physicians have aggressively promoted the procedure because it supposedly allows for better and quicker return to normal activities and should last longer than the 15-20 year life span of normal hip replacements...

FDA tobacco regulation legislation to reach Senate floor Tuesday

Posted on June 04, 2009
CQ Today (6/2, Armstrong) reports that Senate legislation authorizing the FDA to regulate tobacco (HR 1256) "will come to the Senate floor Tuesday, after two committee chairmen persuaded Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to cancel a Tuesday cloture vote on a railroad antitrust bill (S 146) that was the only item on the calendar ahead of the tobacco bill...

Illinois Court Issues Landmark Wrongful Birth Decision; Allows Parents to Seek Damages for Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress and Lifetime Medical Expenses

Posted on April 22, 2009
Today the Illinois Appellate Court held for the first time that under Illinois law, the parents of a disabled child in a ?wrongful birth? case can recover damages for the costs of caring for the child after he reaches the age of majority. The previous Illinois Supreme Court decision which first recognized a claim for wrongful birth, Siemieniec v...

ER Patient Neglected in Chicago

Posted on March 31, 2009
Medicare threatens to revoke University of Chicago Medical Center's certification after patient's death. The AP (3/28, Robinson) reported, "Medicare officials are threatening to take away the University of Chicago Medical Center's certification after the death of a man who sat in the emergency room for hours without being logged in, a center spokesman said...

Facilitated Communication - Discredited by the American Psychological Association

Posted on January 23, 2009
Resolution on Facilitated Communication by the American Psychological Association Adopted in Council, August 14, 1994, Los Angeles, CA Facilitated communication (FC) has been widely adopted throughout North America in special/vocational education services for individuals with developmental disabilities who are nonverbal...

Dr. Sanjay Gupta is not the right choice for Surgeon General

Posted on January 23, 2009
As soon as I saw that Dr. Sanjay Gupta was being considered for Surgeon General I was both surprised and dismayed. Dr. Gupta has actively supported facilitated communication (FC) as a valid means of helping autistic people communicate. FC has been thoroughly discredited by the scientific community, a fact which Dr...

Electronic health records may help reduce malpractice suits

Posted on December 24, 2008
The November 24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine discusses a new study that suggests that the use of electronic health records (EHRs) may help reduce paid malpractice settlements for physicians. An abstract of the article can be found

Hospital infection lawsuits on the rise

Posted on December 17, 2008
Hospital infections are on the rise and so are lawsuits that claim medical malpractice caused the infections.

Growing Sense of Outrage Over Executive Pay

Posted on November 23, 2008
Finally, it appears that Wall Street executives are getting what they deserve.

Patient sues Chicago Hospital, doctor for contracting HIV and hepatitis from infected kidney donor

Posted on November 21, 2008
A Chicago transplant patient filed a medical negligence suit this week against the University of Chicago Medical Center and one of its surgeons, alleging that she contracted HIV and hepatitis C after receiving a kidney from an infected donor. Center for Disease Control and Prevention when organs are donated by high-risk donors.

Minority Trauma Victims More Likely To Die Than Whites

Posted on November 17, 2008

Failure to perform timely PSA tests leads parties to settle wrongful death case for $875,000

Posted on November 16, 2008
A recent wrongful case involving claims that a doctor failed to diagnose prostate cancer settled for $875,000. The decedent?s estate claimed a hospital and treating physician failed to perform annual prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing in the two years before the diagnosis...

Hospital and Illinois Drug Company sued for Heparin overdoes

Posted on September 22, 2008
The families of two newborns who died after they were inadvertently given massive doses of heparin have sued an Indianapolis hospital and the Illinois-based company, The Chicago Tribune reports that parents of two of the three newborns who died in September 2006 filed suit after injections of heparin that were 1,000 times greater than the recommended dose for infants were administered...

Does Linking Chicago Doctors? Pay to Performance Mean Better Healthcare?

Posted on September 09, 2008
Does linking Chicago doctors? pay to performance mean better healthcare? That?s essentially the question posed by Dr. Sandeep Juahar this week in the Medicare on 16 quality indicators, including prescribing aspirin and beta blocker drugs to patients who have suffered heart attacks and strict cholesterol, for prescribing ACE inhibitor drugs to patients with congestive heart failure and administering antibiotics to pneumonia patients in a timely manner...

18 California Hospitals cited for substandard care

Posted on August 27, 2008
Shaya Tayefe Mohajer of the

Supreme Court to hear arguments on Unconstitutionality of Illinois' Medical Malpractice caps

Posted on August 25, 2008
A lawsuit testing the constitutionality of Illinois' medical malpractice damage caps is expected to come before the Illinois? Supreme Court this fall. The 2005 state law limits medical malpractice awards for non-economic damages such as pain and suffering to $500,000 for doctors and $1 million for hospitals...

Medical Credit Scores unethical and illegal

Posted on August 20, 2008
Those focused on fighting hospital negligence have long been concerned that hospitals may begin to routinely consider a patient?s credit rating or ability to pay for health care when making treatment decisions. Last week in fact, in a

FDA warns that CT scans can interfere with pacemakers or defibrillator function

Posted on August 14, 2008
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning last month to doctors who treat patients with electronic devices such as pacemakers, cardiac defibrillators and insulin pumps. Judith Graham of the here. There have been six confirmed reports of devices that malfunctioned after a CT scan and nine other reports of suspected problems...

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