US Childbirth Safety Statistics Could (and should) Be Better

Trial lawyers focus heavily, and rightly, on fetal mortality rates. Birth-related injuries, injuries inflicted prior to birth, perinatal injuries and deaths among infants (whether SIDS, crib or otherwise) should be intolerable. What we sometimes lose sight of is the other side of that blessed event – the Mother. And on that score, studies are confirming […]

Swamp Music

My first year practicing law was the year Florida started limiting the rights of medical malpractice victims. “Tort reform” started in 1988 with Florida’s pre-suit screening rules, making it more difficult to hold hospitals and health care providers responsible for the catastrophic costs of malpractice. Not satisfied with these protections, Florida’s legislature later added changes […]

Not everything bad that happens in a hospital is medical malpractice …

Here’s the story: Miami Bascom Palmer surgical table collapse is an ordinary negligence claim per judge, not subject to medical malpractice rules The test for whether a claim is “medical malpractice” boils down to the use of professional judgment. If the medical or nursing error involves the use or failure to use good professional judgment […]

Peer Review Privilege is Built upon a Bogus Myth (Convince Me I’m Wrong)

The news (Trial Court Order Forcing Disclosure of Quality Assurance Materials Appealed) about the hospital lobby in Illinois (Chicago is home to the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Hospitals that conducts “sentinel event reporting” on licensed hospitals nationally) filing a brief to block patient safety reports led me into my archives. I have written […]

An Emergency Room Liability Primer

An emergency medicine physicians group has sued Envision Healthcare, the giant health care services company, alleging that it violated California laws barring corporations from practicing medicine when it took over staffing of the emergency department at Placentia-Linda Hospital in Placentia, California, in August. Doctors sue Envision Healthcare, say private equity-backed firm shouldn’t run ERs in California The […]