Ten years ago, 12-year-old Rory Staunton dove for a ball in gym class and scraped his arm. He woke up the next day with a 104-degree Fahrenheit fever, so his parents took him to the pediatrician and eventually the emergency room. It was just the stomach flu, they were told. Three days later, Rory died of sepsis after bacteria from the scrape infiltrated his blood and triggered organ failure.

“How does that happen in a modern society?” his father, Ciaran Staunton, asked me.

So begins The Atlantic’s story about a common instance of malpractice. It is not easy to admit that America is so poor in healthcare delivery. According to most metrics, we lag well behind other advanced countries and that gap widened considerably during the Coronavirus pandemic. See, for example,  The Peterson-KFF Health Tracker Survey, How does the quality of the U.S. health system compare to other countries?

If market forces applied, we’d be paying less for shoddy care. But they do not. The result is something I write about on this blog frequently – Quality Fraud. We over pay for marginal return in quality. Worse, too many have no ability to pay and are uninsured. That is a problem we are trying to come to grips with, at least.

Infections – and very serious ones – are more and more commonplace. In Florida, flesh-eating bacteria spread through the ocean and gulf waters. The foods we eat are often tainted with salmonella and other dangerous microbes.

We ought to be able to get a handle on this and yet, over the decades, I’ve watched our healthcare management deteriorate.

Here is a link to the article in The Atlantic.

Doctors Still Struggle to Diagnose a Condition That Kills More Americans Than Stroke

The post Something In Our Bloodstream appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

There’s nothing like a toe-tapper about a mass casualty event. When it comes down to it, that’s all the blues are about: making the insufferable thing bearable. In High Water Everywhere, Charley Patton sang about the 1927 Mississippi levee break that displaced tens of thousands. Patton lived on Dockery’s Plantation near Greenville, Mississippi, where the Army Corps of Engineers built a system of earthen wall barriers designed to control the Mississippi River. In the spring of 1927, the River flooded. The levee groaned before failing. Greenville residents are described as watching from the streets below as riverboats floated high above them on the topped levees of the cresting river before it broke. In many parts, the disaster was slow-moving. The muddy wall of water (described by some as seven feet high) moved across bottom land at a pace of fourteen miles a day. In the tense aftermath of the flood, riots and violence broke out between whites and blacks – who felt impressed into service of the recovery efforts and were forced into centralized tent camps that may have felt more like prison or slave camps.

None of this is mentioned in Patton’s song High Water Everywhere, but the feeling of dread, chaos, and confusion that permeated the Mississippi low country in early 1927 surely comes through. The blues idiom is like that – simultaneously and intensely personal and universal, putting the singer at the very center of a universally appreciated narrative of difficulty and sometimes tragedy.

Backwater at Blytheville, backed up all around
Backwater at Blytheville, done took Joiner town
It was fifty families and children come to sink and drown

The water was risin’ up at my friend’s door
The water was risin’ up at my friend’s door
The man said to his women folk, “Lord, we’d better go”

The post High Water Everywhere appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

Lee Health is evacuating up to 400 patients to hospitals in Collier County because of water pressure losses at two of its campuses. More patients will be transferred in the coming days as beds are found, said Dr. Larry Antonucci, president and chief executive officer of Lee Health.

When Lee Health says “campuses” they mean hospitals. These are not teaching hospitals. And they operate all of the hospitals in Lee County – three in total. So, all but one are being evacuated. Here is the link from the paper of record in Fort Myers, Florida.

Lee Health evacuating 400 patients to Collier hospitals; another 400 will be moved out of county

The post Lee Hospital Patients Are Being Evacuated appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

“We discovered that nitrogen-enriched Caloosahatchee River discharges have consistently intensified K. brevis blooms to varying degrees over time,”

Here is the link to the story.

Study Shows Pollution, Runoff Intensify Red Tide Blooms in Florida Waters

The post The Swamp appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.