Transparency and patient safety are a problem in health care around the globe – not just in the US. In 2018, the largest peer review in NHS and Northern Ireland’s history identified numerous concerns regarding a neurology practice, including lack of proper clinical investigation, inaccurate diagnoses, poor prescribing practices, poor recording keeping, lack of openness […]
Despite our work in Charles versus Baptist, hospital lobbyists keep picking away at the patient safety disclosures voted for by Florida. As noted in a recent news story, the case my office handled established an important precedent (overturning the First DCA in the process). In a key 2017 ruling in a Jacksonville case, the Florida […]
The Thompson Law Firm Video: What Is Medical Malpractice?
When I represented hospitals, my boss used to stress bedside manner as the most effective risk management. It’s been forty years and the industry is still trying to figure out a way to make that stick. Healthcare is fully embracing the concept of consumerism, and with that comes the need for consumer and patient satisfaction—and […]
DOJ pursues billing fraud cases. In some cases, the patients did not know what they were being tested for. TRICARE beneficiaries were enticed to provide urine or saliva specimens in exchange for $50 gift cards. Evidence at trial demonstrated that Rao was paid in exchange for signing off on medically unnecessary and repetitive toxicology and […]
I know – for a fact – that this happens waaay too often. Sometimes, the physicians and trial lawyers share an interest in patient safety that is contrary to the interests of the doctor’s insurance carrier. “Protecting patient and physician confidentiality must be a paramount concern of medical malpractice carriers. What Coverys has done in […]
In addition to the Florida legal hurdles I write about on this blog, there is specialized medical knowledge related to birth injuries that only some medical malpractice lawyers possess. One of the required skills that few possess is reading electronic fetal heart monitoring. There’s internal and external. The nurses need to know that you grasp […]
Last week, a story on electronic health records ended up in this blog – reminding me of a 2018 post I made here concerning the increasingly deleterious effect on the accuracy of medical records caused by technology and user laziness or deception that it can promote. The 2018 post about changes in medical record-keeping can […]
It’s my body and my health so why can’t I be the legal owner of my medical record? This important question was debated during a series of webinars run by The BMJ on patient access to medical records. Ownership and maintenance of medical records is a thorny problem in the era of electronic health records. Computer and […]
More than four years ago, Tennessee nurse RaDonda Vaught typed two letters into a hospital’s computerized medication cabinet, selected the wrong drug from the search results, and gave a patient a fatal dose. The new Kaiser report on medication errors is here. In 2017, I posted a three-part series about my experience litigating a deadly […]
