Arkansas updates in category: Medical Malpractice

The Medicare funding package proposed by President Bush includes another attempt to severely limit the rights of injured patients to hold negligent doctors and hospitals accountable. I like to call...

Commonly called nosocomial or hospital based infections are on the rise in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that in U.S. hospitals alone 1.7 million...

Hardly a day passes when there is not another injustice due to arbitrary caps on damages placed there by legislators without looking at the facts of the case. Just today I read about a birth injury...

Beginning October 1, 2008 hospital acquired infections may start going down. That is when the new Medicare rules go into effect denying payment to hospitals for hospital acquired infections that...

For the fifth straight year, a preventable safety mistake known as ‘Failure to Rescue’ is the leading cause of preventable death in U.S. hospitals. More than surgical mistakes, the wrong or overdose of drugs, or unforeseeable complications, ‘Failure to Rescue’ is the most common preventable problem. 'Condition H' allows a patient or loved one to summon emergency help, the same emergency number that doctors and nurses use, when they feel distress. This procedure may save your life.

According to the Fifth Annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study, 238,337 medicare patients died as a result of preventable safety errors from 2004 to 2006. The report goes on to state that...

Several years ago we represented a young man who had received Phenegen via the wrong route. The medication error resulted in brain damage. At trial the hospital claimed it had a very low rate of...

The Duragesic Fentanyl transdermal system is fatally flawed. There have been thousands of deaths nationwide associated with Fentanyl overdoses from defective patches.The Duragesic patch is manufactured by two Johnson & Johnson subsidiaries, Janssen Pharmaceutica,L.P. and Alza Corp. The patch was put on the market in 1991. Shortly there were numerous cases of Fentanyl overdosing from the...

The Duragesic patch is designed to relieve pain by allowing Fentanyl to absorb through the skin into the bloodstream. The scary factor of this patch is that Fentanyl is a very potent opiate that is anywhere from 50 to 100 times more powerful than Morphine. These patches have a manufacturing and design defect that can cause too much Fentanyl to release into the bloodstream causing death. Money is...

A cervical corpectomy and strut graft operation is a surgery on the cervical spine that requires extreme skill and expertise on behalf of the surgeon. A corpectomy is surgery that relieves pressure on the spinal cord due to spinal stenosis. Spinal Stenosis is bone spurs pressing on the spinal cord. When pressure is placed on the spinal cord an array of problems can occur: walking, bowels,...

Everyday we hear about hospital acquired infection. MRSA has moved to the top of the list as a leading cause of death or prolonged hospital stay.Health care is not as safe as it should be. According to the Institute of Medicine, a substantial body of evidence points to medical errors as a leading cause of death and injury. What can be done to prevent the spread of infection and medical errors...

What is this world coming to? Insurers are refusing to pay for hospital errors. Give me a break! For years the hospital's liability carriers have had to be drug into court kicking and screaming to make them pay for a hospital's errors. Now, it looks like a patient's medical insurance is following suit. Who then is to pay for the hospital's errors? Surely not the wrongdoer...Latest news...

Has your doctor been disciplined? The National Practitioner Data Bank is kept secret from both patients and from almost all physicians thanks to the American Medical Association's successful lobbying for secrecy when the legislation concerning the Data Bank was being considered.Public Citizen's Health Research Group has established its own data bank of doctors who have been disciplined. The...

Errors in health care are a leading cause of death and injury. Health care should be safe. It is not! In a revealing study, the Institute of Medicine found that sizable numbers of Americans are harmed as a result of medical errors. This study was authored by a blue ribbon panel which included William C Richardson as its chair. Mr. Richardson was President and CEO of the W. K. Kellogg...

Meningitis is usually a complication of another bacterial infection such as pneumonia. With meningitis, the brain and spinal cord meninges (hence meningitis) become infected. If caught early and the infecting organism responds to antibiotics, the prognosis is usually good. If the meningitis is not treated early the prognosis is much worse, often resulting in death or permanent brain damage. ...