In a key 2017 ruling in a Jacksonville case, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that a hospital was required to provide records to a family in a malpractice case because of the constitutional amendment. The 5-2 ruling overturned a decision by the 1st District Court of Appeal, which had said the federal law shielded the records.

The history of the Constitutional amendment approved by voters goes back to 2004.

The 2004 constitutional amendment passed amid fierce political fights between plaintiffs’ attorneys, doctors and hospitals about the state’s medical-malpractice laws. The amendment, titled “Patients’ Right to Know About Adverse Medical Incidents,” was spearheaded by a political committee linked to plaintiffs’ attorneys …

Here are two posts explaining our appeal in Charles v. Baptist.

Charles v. Baptist (One)

Charles v. Baptist (Three)

Now, the industry and the First District are again attacking Florida’s constitution and the Charles precedent to make patients less safe. Here’s a link to the story out of Tally.

Florida’s First District Court of Appeals Urges SCOF To Rewrite The Constitutional Amendment Passed By Florida Voters Forcing Disclosure of Adverse Incident Reports

The post My Dad and I Didn’t Battle The Charles Case With So Many Other Fine Lawyers, Just To See Florida’s Constitution Undone. appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

Here is the link:

‘I delivered my baby scared and alone.’: Mom raises awareness about hospital malpractice after traumatic birth

The post “By the time Jeremy came back with help, I had delivered the baby by myself with no one else in the room. All alone.” appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

Here is a link to my page describing my medical malpractice experience”

wdeft Medical Malpractice Cases

Here’s a story from JD Supra on the subject.

Electronic Fetal Heart Monitoring and Medical Malpractice

The post Experience is Required For Litigating Birth Injuries: Fetal Heart Monitoring appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

By abolishing longstanding legal protections, the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade serves American families poorly, putting their health, safety, finances, and futures at risk. In view of these predictable consequences, the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine strongly condemn the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision.

The post The New England Journal of Medicine: We “Strongly Condemn” Dobbs (for reasons of health care) appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

A federal judge has awarded $5 million to a New Hampshire woman who suffered years of pain and scarring after a botched surgery at an Army hospital to repair an injury she received in childbirth.

The link to the NH bench verdict is here,

The post Failed Episiotomy Bench Verdict appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

All government programs get an acronym and the acronym for this burden-shifting agency is NICA (The Florida Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association). As anyone would have anticipated, it turned into a racket for politicians with little notion of the issues (despite the enormous implications to these vulnerable kids and families).

If you log onto the NICA site here,  you’ll be told that “NICA ensures birth-injured children and adults receive the care they need while reducing the financial burden on medical providers and families.” This kind of gaslighting is too prevalent in politics today. The sole purpose of NICA is and has always been to shift the enormous cost of medical errors occurring at birth. The legislature did not want these kids to have the same right to a jury trial (protected by the state and federal constitutions) that other injured Floridians enjoy.

The cost of brain injury caused by medical error amounts to tens of millions of dollars per child. If all you care about is unloading that cost from the healthcare and insurance companies that would be responsible for those damages, you wouldn’t really care that the cost got shifted off on the public trough. That was the result of NICA: Families of brain-damaged children have limited legal remedies (without top-notch legal help and brave judges). Here is the link,

A Program Promised to Pay for Brain-Damaged Infants’ Care. Then It Sent Families to Medicaid Instead.

Perhaps embarrassed by the cruelty of this scheme, the Legislature slowly began making exceptions for some families that managed to fight their way through the bureaucracy. That has happened more than once lately, reflecting the hint of movement toward acknowledging the catastrophic error of locking these kids out of court in the first place. Links to those small moves of remorse are found

here

and

here

These token payments – fought for valiantly by families and their lawyers – don’t begin to cover the costs necessary to take care of all the children with catastrophic neurological injuries caused by medical error.

With other Florida trial lawyers, I am working to get these children and their families around this inequitable regulatory scheme.

The post On Top Of Locking Many Brain Damaged Children Out Of Court, Florida Begins Gaslighting Them appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

What we sometimes lose sight of is the other side of that blessed event – the Mother. And on that score, studies are confirming a problematic and worsening trend.

From the New York Times, a link and a quote,

US Maternal And Birth Related Deaths Are Rising

The United States already has a much higher maternal mortality rate than other developed countries, and the increase in deaths pushes the nation’s maternal mortality rate to 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2020 from 20.1 deaths in 2019. Maternal mortality rates in developed countries have in recent years ranged from fewer than two deaths per 100,000 live births in Norway and New Zealand to just below nine deaths per 100,000 live births in France and Canada.

And from the peer-reviewed journals,

Obstetrics and Gynecology: US Trends in Maternal Mortality

Rigorous studies carried out by the National Center for Health Statistics show that previously reported increases in maternal mortality rates in the United States were an artifact of changes in surveillance. The pregnancy checkbox, introduced in the revised 2003 death certificate and implemented by the states in a staggered manner, resulted in increased identification of maternal deaths and in reported maternal mortality rates.

The post US Childbirth Safety Statistics Could (and should) Be Better appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

The post US Leading In Maternal Vulnerability Is Unacceptable. appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

The post Leading the way … appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

The post April 4, 2019 appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.