Florida updates in category: Medical Malpractice

A study by the Public Citizen, an independent watchdog group, reported a significant drop in State Medical Board Serious Disciplinary Actions against doctor's from 2005 to 2007. It is their opinion...

Increasingly, doctors require their patients to waive their constitiutional right to a jury trial by signing binding arbitration agreements. Under binding arbitration agreements, if the physician...

According to an article published April 1, 2008, in the New York Times, a national set of standards is currently being developed to help regulate the way health insurance companies...

In a study to be released next week in the April 2008 edition of the journal Pediatrics, researchers found that roughly one out of 15 hospitalized children - a staggering 540,000 kids each...

In a disturbing case out of the Boston area, a pediatrician is accused of molestation of young boys under his care. While this is a terrible situation it points out the absurdity of medical...

Thankfully for the sick in Minnesota, a surgeon will stop seeing patients after he removed the wrong kidney from a patient. In doing so, the surgeon left a cancerous kidney inside the patient. The surgery was done last Tuesday, but only on Wednesday was it discovered what had happened. To prevent something like this from happening again, the Chief Medical Officer of the hospital said that...

A jury verdict came down in the medical malpractice / wrongful death lawsuit of Actor John Ritter last Friday. The lawsuit was brought by Ritter's Widow and Children. After two days of deliberation, the jury cleared a cardiologist and a radiologist of negligence. As such, there will be no damage judgment against these doctors. The family claimed that Ritter was misdiagnosed and was provided...

June McDowell was supposed to be going in for knee replacement surgery. Instead something went terribly wrong during her 2005 surgery at the Naval Hospital Jacksonville. Now McDowell is suing.McDowell told Channel 4 the last two years have been a nightmare. She is wheelchair bound and cannot be fitted for a prosthetic device."I have a bed that I lay in, you know. I just can't do anything. I...

In a decision just released earlier today the Florida Supreme Court ruled on the scope of the 2004 Florida Constitutional Amendment 7, entitled the "Patients Right to Know" Act. In a ruling that is welcome to consumers and patients who are concerned about the safety of their families when choosing a hospital, our State Supreme Court held in rulings on cases called Florida Hospital Waterman,...

Proposed legislation in Missouri increase the liability caps in medical malpractice cases for cases of abortion malpractice. . Under the present medical malpractice caps in Missouri, pain and suffering damage awards are capped at $350,000. The new law would make the caps invalid in claims of abortion related medical malpractice. Obviously this will be a hot topic and highly debated between...

Actor John Ritter, best known from his days in the sitcom "Three's Company", died in 2003 at age 54 from a tear in the aorta, at a hospital in Burbank, California. Subsequent investigation by his family led them to conclude that the aorta tear was not treated correctly and, in fact, was misdiagnosed as a heart attack. The Ritter Estate, on behalf of his surviving relatives is now suing his...

A man that cut the end of his finger off in a hobby related accident was able to regrow skin, blood vessels, and the nail after using a extracellular matrix powder. About half an inch of finger was regrown in about 4 weeks using the powder. This medical marvel was performed by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh. This powder is a medical product called extracellular matrix. Made from...

This week the FDA issued a Public Health Notification to the healthcare community which to a lay person would seem to be pretty obvious. The Notice begins: Dear Healthcare Practitioner:This is to advise you of serious adverse events associated with unretrieved device fragments (UDFs) and provide recommendations to mitigate these events. A UDF is a fragment of a medical device that has separated...

According to a study, which was conducted by seven doctors affiliated with Harvard University and the Cambridge Health Alliance, a network of nonprofit Massachusetts hospitals, emergency room waiting times rose 36% for all patients and 150% for heart attack patients. An increase in the number of ER visits, plus a decline in the number of emergency rooms, likely has contributed to the wait. ...

All over the country reports are coming in that Medical Malpractice lawsuits are down tremendously, despite the insurance lobby propaganda. In Pennsylvania, for example, medical malpractice lawsuits are down 38% since 2002 and in Philadelphia by 52%. Furthermore, two of the largest insurance carriers in the state for that kind of coverage are decreasing their rates and since 2002, 57 new...