Congress created the National Practitioners Data Bank in 1986, passing a piece of legislation whose mission entailed improving the quality of healthcare, reducing abuse and fraud and protecting the public. A vast online repository, it includes information about adverse actions by practitioners and medical-malpractice payments from lawsuits. “…it is a […]
Category: Medical Malpractice
Patient Access to Adverse-Incident Reports Threatened Florida’s Constitution Revision Commission has on its 2018 agenda a proposal to amend a provision that gives parties in medical-malpractice lawsuits access to adverse-incident reports that can make or break cases. The proposal, made by Commissioner Tim Cerio, seeks to limit such access for […]
Medical professionals have debated the frequency and relative age for performing mammogram studies on women; some claiming that once yearly is too often and under 50 years old is too soon. Whether these debates involve more concern for insurance company payouts than prudent healthcare, I will leave to other articles. […]
Nursing-home nightmares continue to plague the country, from California to Texas to Minnesota to Pennsylvania. But perhaps no other state is as impacted by the abuse, neglect and robbery of the old and infirm as Florida. There are nearly 700 licensed facilities from the Keys to the Panhandle that provide […]
A recent article in Law360 suggested that nursing home claims may rise in the wake of Hurricane Irma and the Hollywood Hills Nursing Home tragedy. The article seemed to downplay the problem in nursing homes. It should not have. Certainly I am sure problems have been exacerbated by the recent […]
The death toll mounted again in the Broward County nursing-home disaster following Hurricane Irma. A ninth patient expired after being evacuated from The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills in the midst of a power outage that turned the facility into a sweltering sarcophagus of sorts. It was reported that some […]
Too many patients and not enough nurses, CNA’s or other care givers to properly treat them. Patients crying for assistance from too few staff. Tragically, patients die or are critically ill because someone wanted to maximize the profit line. That happened while one the nation’s most powerful hurricanes was barreling […]
Clinicians, engineers, safety analysts and scientists at the ECRI Institute have released a looming list of things that could go wrong with modern medical devices and technology in the marketplace. The list, titled “Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2017,” was compiled from each participant’s expertise, insight and research into […]
The lack of good care in nursing homes is a very real problem. Owners trying to enhance the bottom line often run with thin staffs, and it is the patient who suffers. For example, bed sores can cause terrible injuries and often death, but they never should happen. Sadly, in […]
Operating on the wrong extremity. Leaving a piece of equipment inside a patient after surgery. Failing to diagnose an illness. All are nightmare situations for a patient. But all are among the most-common types of medical negligence taking place in America today. “Medical malpractice occurs when a health care […]
