- Ben Glass | December 28, 2006 10:51 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeThe D.C. City Council has passed legislation which will require, as of July 2007, doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers to report "adverse medical events" to a centralized medical malpractice database being created by the City Medical Board. (See the Washington Post article on this development in Washington D.C. medical malpractice law here.) Apparently, doctors will have 60 days to...
- Ben Glass | December 25, 2006 7:30 AM |
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MiscellaneousI saw this message on a card last year... It was attributed to "unknown"Peace.it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work, it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All!
- Ben Glass | December 22, 2006 5:21 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeThe British Medical Journal has an interesting article of a study comparing actual medical records with what hospitals were reporting to regulators about adverse incidents.To test the performance of seflf reporting systems, researchers compared data from the routine reporting system with a review of case notes for the same patients in a large NHS hospital in England.Heres what they found:The...
- Ben Glass | December 21, 2006 5:12 AM |
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Automobile AccidentsI spoke to a very nice lady earlier this week who was searching for an attorney to represent her in her Virginia car accident case. She told me she had spent a lot of time searching on the Internet and then calling attorneys. She had read Five Deadly Sins That Can Wreck Your Virginia Car Accident Case.She told me she basically had just one question:Her question was this:My injury is [she...
- Ben Glass | December 15, 2006 8:41 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeIn the world of drug litigation, a jury in Texas ruled that Centocor Inc. negligently and fraudulently failed to warn doctors and consumers about potential side effects of Remicade and must pay almost 20 million dollars to a woman who claims she developed lupus as a result of using Remicade. Hamilton, et al. v. Centocor Inc., et al., No. 03-60526-4 (Texas Ct. at Law No. 4, Nueces Cty.).In a 5-1...
- Ben Glass | December 14, 2006 5:38 PM |
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MiscellaneousKathleen Fackelmann is reporting in USA TODAY that medical residents are still hurting patients because of their own sleep deprivation. Apparently the risk of injuring or killing a patient by an overworked health care provider can increase as much as 700% with some schedules."Working for more than 24 hours is hazardous," says sleep researcher Charles Czeisler at the Harvard Medical School....
- Ben Glass | December 14, 2006 10:54 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeThe New England Journal of Medicine has a great article reporting on a study that shows that the faster a doctor does a colonocopy the more polyps (pre cancer) he misses. No surprise there, is there?In a study extending over 15 months, 12 experienced gastroenterologists performed 7882 colonoscopies, of which 2053 were screening examinations in subjects who had not previously undergone...
- Ben Glass | December 13, 2006 4:51 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeNot according to a new study published by University of Pennsylvania researchers and reported in today's on-line edition of the Houston Chronicle.Apparently when you see a study comparing death rates the "best" hospitals are only marginally better than the "worst." The study looked at results from 3,657 hospitals nationwide.Looking at heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia, deaths were only...
- Ben Glass | December 12, 2006 6:04 AM |
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MiscellaneousThere is an interesting story in the November 29, 2006 edition of the Boston Globe's website. It seems that the Boston Bar Association is trying to remedy the "problem" of few trials. The article says, "because of the high cost of going to trial, fewer of unpredictable juror verdicts, and other factors, many cases instead are being resolved through settlements, mediations, and arbitration,...
- Ben Glass | December 10, 2006 3:08 PM |
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MiscellaneousAttorneys struggle with trying to market themselves ethically and effectively, without busing the bank. I've got ideas on that subject so, together with my friends from ClarisLaw, I've started up the "Effective, Ethical and Outside the Box Marketing for Attorneys web site. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think,
- Ben Glass | December 10, 2006 12:16 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeWe represent the family of a mother whose death was allegedly caused by the medical malpractice of one of the major HMO-type healthcare providers in Northern Virginia, Washington and Maryland. That defendant sought to obtain by subpoena a lifetime of medical, scholastic and mental health records for the decedent's 11 year-old son and 25 years of medical and mental health records for the...
- Ben Glass | December 09, 2006 7:06 AM |
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MiscellaneousAs you might imagine Northern Virginia has a great many hospitals and doctors. We also have lots of medical equipment like MRIs and CT scans but the Washington Post reported yesterday how one of the major players in the area, the Inova Medical System, is apparently trying to curtail competition.Virginia is archaic and backwards in many ways and this appears to be no different. Apparently if a...
- Ben Glass | December 08, 2006 5:27 AM |
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MiscellaneousA big cheer for local Federal District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema who threw out a lawsuit filed by an Arlington woman who says she gained three pounds on the "milk diet" which dairy companies have been promoting. Her lawsuit was against the industry. Judge Brinkema ruled that individual people cannot take on the industry in court. An individual may file a claim for specific damages to herself...
- Ben Glass | December 07, 2006 9:16 PM |
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Property Owner's Liability (Slip & Fall)You will not be able to get scallions from Taco Bell any time soon after it reported that testing suggested that the green onions may be responsible for the e. coli outbreak that has made more than 40 people sick in three states. In a press release Taco Bell said that preliminary testing by an independent lab found three samples of green onions that appear to have a dangerous strain of the...
- Ben Glass | December 05, 2006 2:11 PM |
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MiscellaneousWe are Tom Mighell's Blog of the Day for yesterday. Tom writes an Internet legal weblog which is very popular.Tom commented that we "didn't say where in Northern Virgina" we practice but that probably means that he's never heard of the battle between Northern Virginia and the rest of the state. Of course, we are "housed" in Northern Virginia but practice personal injury and medical malpractice...
- Ben Glass | December 04, 2006 7:26 PM |
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Property Owner's Liability (Slip & Fall)According to published reports, in this Prince William County personal injury case the plaintiff fell on ice at the exit to a car wash. Precipitation had stopped the day before the accident and some of the ice was caused by run off from the car wash. The plaintiff claimed that the proprietor of the car wash had ample time to clear the ice. The plaintiff had $21,000.00 in medical bills...
- Ben Glass | December 02, 2006 6:59 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeYesterday I wrote about a new report showing that wrong sided surgery is probably undereported in the medical literature. I found an interesting blog by a surgeon about this form of obvious medical malpractice. The key to preventing this form of medical error, he says, is communication. We agreeFor me, there are some fundamental issues that are at the heart of the wrong-side/wrong-site surgery...
- Ben Glass | December 01, 2006 6:28 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeAccording to a recent article in the Archives of Surgery, between 1300 and 2700 surgeries take place each year where either the patient, the correct body side or the actual procedure is mis-identified. Not surprisingly, reporting by the medical profession of these events of medical malpractice is almost non-existent, with most reports appearing in general newspapers and magazines.The report in...