Woman awarded $813,000 over misdiagnosis

A US jury awarded $813,000 this week to a woman whose foot was amputated following the wrong diagnosis by her physician.

It was the second time a jury heard Darlene Turner's medical malpractice suit against now-retired Dr. Nathan Stime. The first case, in 2008, was declared a mistrial because of juror misconduct.

The Spokesman-Review reported that Turner first went to Stime in 2004. She alleged that Stime failed to conduct an appropriate physical when he diagnosed her as having terminal cancer. She actually was suffering from pneumonia, which caused her to lapse into a coma and later resulted in the amputation of her left foot.

The jury awarded Turner damages for past and future medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering and for changes to her lifestyle.

This article is courtesy of The Olympian.

What is responsible for the hike in clinical negligence claims?

It seems that the NHS is facing something of a medical negligence crisis at the moment. In February this year, the Francis Report published details of the failings of NHS managers at Mid Staffordshire Hospital, which led to between 400 and 1,200 deaths over five years.

According to the Medical Protection Society, legal claims against GPs have risen by 40% in 2012 alone, which is a staggering leap. They also stated that GPs are ‘more likely to be sued than ever before’. Clinical negligence solicitors appear to be having a field day with these statistics. This article attempts to get to the bottom of what is causing the spike in claims being made.

‘No win, no fee’

The Medical Defence Union is claiming that the availability of ‘no win, no fee’ solicitors has led to a rise in legal cases against doctors and healthcare officials, which has increased by 52%.
‘No win, no fee’ refers to a policy that medical negligence solicitors offer in the UK. Unless your case is successful, you will not have to pay out legal costs for the solicitor representing you.

This policy was introduced in response to Legal Aid not being available to certain patients who sought to right the wrongs done to them. This has proved to be highly popular and doctors are blaming these solicitors for the sharp rise in cases.

What else is causing the rise in cases?

Commentators are suggesting that patients are now becoming more litigious because of the options available to them with these kinds of solicitors. However, there are other factors involved in the rise in the number of cases, too.

One possible factor is that, due to the considerable strain on NHS resources, patient safety is being compromised. However, the head of claims for the MDU, Jill Harding, commented that this wasn’t the case.

She said, “The increase in claim numbers is not, we believe, driven by deteriorating standards of care, or a change in the underlying type of incidents that are giving rise to claims.”

Responses

In addition to the rise in the number of claims being made, the compensation value for most cases has skyrocketed. Given that the NHS’ expenditure on medical negligence cases rose by 45.9% from 2011 to 2012 to over £1 billion, there needs to be some kind of official response made.

As a result of these rises, the government has proposed changes to be implemented in April this year to lower the costs associated with such cases.

This article is courtesy of the Economic Voice.

Heart attack misdiagnosis is more common in women

At first, the woman assumed it was anxiety. She had a full-time job as a manager and was the mother of four kids who needed to be taken to multiple athletic events and appointments. But the chest pain, numbness in her arm, shortness of breath and other symptoms were not just a sign of her hectic life.

They were symptoms of a heart attack.

The woman was lucky. She called 911 and was taken to the hospital, where she received a proper diagnosis and treatment. Not all women share the same fate.

Misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis more common in women.

Women are more likely than men to suffer from a misdiagnosis of a heart attack or a delayed diagnosis of heart attack. According to the website hearthealthywomen.org, one study shows women younger than age 55 were seven times more likely to be misdiagnosed than men of the same age. Being sent from the hospital without being properly diagnosed doubled a patient's chance of dying.
In addition to misdiagnoses, women more frequently receive delayed treatment for heart attacks. According to the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a 2009 study of more than 5,800 people with heart attack symptoms who called 911 found that women were 52 percent more likely than men to be delayed in reaching the hospital after dialing 911. Delays can be deadly. Delays of 15 minutes have been shown to increase damage to the heart muscle, resulting in poorer outcomes.

Doctors and patients miss symptoms

Why the difference? According to hearthealthywomen.org, one possible reason is a myth. Heart disease is often thought of as a man's disease, but it is not. Heart disease killed 28,370 women in California in 2009. An average of 100 women die from heart attack and stroke in the state every day.
Doctors could miss the signs of heart attack in women simply because they are not expecting them. Women themselves are less likely than men to realize that their symptoms could be heart attack, and they are less likely to seek treatment right away.

Women's symptoms are often different and more subtle than the heart attack symptoms men experience. Although men and women may have crushing chest pressure, some women may have a heart attack without any. 
According to the American Heart Association, they may have:
- Shortness of breath
- Pressure in the lower chest and upper abdomen
- Dizziness or lightheadedness
- Upper back pain
- Fatigue

iMinutes count, contact a lawyer if you have been harmed

Doctors and emergency departments have a responsibility to promptly diagnose and treat heart disease even when the symptoms are subtle. Minutes count. If you or a loved one has been harmed by a doctor's failure to diagnose you with heart attack, an experienced medical malpractice attorney can explain your options and evaluate your case.

This article is courtesy of the Digital Journal.

Jeremy Hunt announces NHS managers will be blacklisted for failure and patients will rate individual wards in major shake-up

Individual hospital wards will be rated by patients and negligent managers blacklisted from working in the NHS as part of sweeping reforms to prevent another Mid-Staffordshire style scandal, the Government has announced.

Under plans unveiled by the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt hospitals will be given Ofsted style ratings from next year – while patient satisfaction ratings for individual wards and units will also be published.

In addition the Government has signalled that it expects hospitals to employ more nurses to improve patient care and will tighten up the training and monitoring of healthcare assistants.

But it stepped back from plans to require a legal “duty of candour” for all NHS employees to expose wrong-doing saying it was concerned it could perversely lead to a new “culture of fear” in the organisation.

The Francis Inquiry into the lessons to be learnt from Mid Staffordshire also called for a new regulatory system for the NHS's army of healthcare assistants. But Mr Hunt only announced a code of practice and minimum training standards for the support staff, saying that a regulatory system could create a “bureaucratic quagmire”.

Hundreds of patients are thought to have died needlessly at Stafford Hospital between 2005 and 2009 after they were “routinely neglected”, given the wrong medication and left without food or water for days on end.

The Francis Inquiry into the scandal made 290 sweeping recommendations for healthcare regulators, providers and the Government.

Announcing its response yesterday Mr Hunt said the Government would:

• Appoint a new Chief Inspector of Hospitals who would be able to name and shame poorly performing trusts. Trusts that do not deliver adequate care to patients could be put into a “failure regime” and possibly into administration.

• Award hospitals Ofsted-style ratings including “outstanding”, “good“, “requiring improvement” or “poor”. Hospitals judged not to be providing compassionate care will be unable to achieve a “good” rating even if their medical outcomes are excellent.

• Move towards a system where all NHS staff are paid according to their current performance rather than time served.

• Ensure all nurses spend up to a year working as healthcare assistants as part of the degree courses.

Department of Health sources said under the new regime patients will be able to see not just how individual hospitals are performing but how well units within those hospitals do.

From next month all patients who visit A&E or who spend time on an acute ward will be asked to rate their care within 48 hours of discharge.

The feedback is expected to be published so other patients will be able to see how hospital services are rated before they have an operation.

In addition hospital managers who manipulate statistics or try and cover up cases of poor care will be “struck off” and banned from any future role in healthcare.

The Government is expected to set out details of how the new managerial barring scheme will work within the next few days.

Sources suggested that it might include managers at below board level but stressed that no final decision had yet been taken.

They added that it was being designed to ensure that there was a clear mechanism to ensure that failing managers did not get “shunted around the system”.

“In the past you’ve had managers who fabricated hospital waiting time figures turn up at a health authority or a primary care trust and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

“This is about bringing in a system to ensure that managers are held account for their failings and don’t just move around the NHS without any consequence.”

Mr Hunt conceded that as a result of the changes announced the NHS may have to recruit hundreds of extra nurses.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if many more nurses are employed,” Mr Hunt said.

Until now health chiefs have said that the reduction in nursing numbers was not affecting patient care.

But the campaign group set up in the wake of the Stafford Hospital scandal said the reforms did not go far enough.

Julie Bailey, head of Cure The NHS said the leadership and the “command and control type management” of the organisation had to change.

She told the BBC: “I sat through every day of that public inquiry, all the bodies failed, all the bodies had to apologise, and I really don't think that's been addressed in this statement.

“How many more reviews do we need to tell us the one thing that needs to change is the culture that needs to change? The very top, the people that rule the NHS, the leadership, that's what needs to change, and it works all the way down to the front line.”

Others also criticised the decision not to introduce a system of regulation for healthcare workers.

Jeremy Hughes, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society said: “Real professional standards and registration for healthcare assistants does not constitute a box-ticking exercise and to suggest as such is a deeply disappointing compromise of patient safety for cost or convenience.”

The independent think tank the King's Fund also warned that the value of Ofsted-style ratings in hospitals was very limited.

“The value of aggregated ratings for hospitals is highly questionable,” said Chris Ham, its chief executive.

“These are complex organisations with different services and specialisms that may vary in quality so an overall rating can hide significant failings within a trust.”

 This article is courtesy of The Independent.

NHS care overhaul measures don't go far enough, say patient groups

Health secretary plans to name and shame failing hospitals and bar failing managers from the service after Mid Staffs scandal.

Failing hospitals will be named and shamed and NHS managers responsible for failures will be barred from working in the health service under government plans to ensure a Mid Staffs-style care scandal never happens again – but the health secretary's proposals were nevertheless criticised by patient groups for not going far enough.

Jeremy Hunt said on Tuesday he was laying the foundations for a culture "of zero harm and compassionate care" – but doubts surfaced over his failure to endorse post-Mid Staffs recommendations over minimum staffing levels in hospitals and whether NHS organisations would respond to a "duty of candour" to tell the truth when things go wrong.

The cabinet minister was responding to Robert Francis QC's report last month on the failings at Stafford hospital, part of the Mid Staffordshire NHS foundation trust, in 2005-2009, which contributed to the deaths of between 400 and 1,200 patients, mostly elderly.

The health secretary told MPs there had been "unacceptable and, in some cases, inhumane treatment" at Stafford, where there had been "a betrayal of the worst kind" of patients, their families and "the vast majority of NHS staff who do everything in their power to give their patients the high quality, compassionate care they deserve."

Dr Peter Carter, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing said that Hunt was wrong not to insist on specific levels of minimum staffing as recommended by Francis. He said greater numbers of staff result in better healthcare: "Simply leaving the setting of staffing levels to local discretion clearly isn't working and the time has come for mandatory, legally enforceable safe staffing levels."

Action against Medical Accidents (Avma), which has campaigned for years for a duty of candour, was concerned ministers had apparently not been convinced by the recommendation from Francis that individual NHS employees should be made liable for mistakes – and urged the Department of Health not to discount it.

But the department's 82-page response to Francis's 290 recommendations warned that there was a risk of "unintentionally create[ing] a culture of fear. This in turn could prevent lessons being learned and could make services less safe".

Peter Walsh, the chief executive of Avma, said Hunt's statement was "vague" – but welcomed the statutory duty on NHS organisations to tell the truth when patients have been harmed or killed as tougher measures would "help change the culture of cover-up and denial that has been eating away at the NHS like a cancer" and be "the biggest advance in patient safety and patients' rights in the history of the NHS.

A final decision on the proposal of personal accountability will not be made until later, subject to the findings of a review of patient safety in the NHS being conducted by Professor Don Berwick, a global expert in safe care who has advised President Barack Obama, who will report by July. Many medical organisations, including the British Medical Association, have expressed concern that such a move would deter staff from owning up to errors and open the NHS to a flood of new litigation.

Many of Hunt's proposals had been carefully trailed in the past few days. Failing hospitals would be monitored with a system of performance ratings based on Ofsted's existing assessments of schools in England. Meanwhile, managers responsible for failures will be barred from working elsewhere in the health service, while clauses gagging ex-NHS staff from raising concerns publicly will be banned.

Lisa Jordan, a medical lawyer at Irwin Mitchell, which has investigated over 50 cases of alleged negligence at Mid Staffs since 2005, said many patients would wonder why a zero-harm culture wasn't already in place. "Until ministers give their full response and put a detailed plan of action together responding to each of the 290 recommendations set out in the Francis reports, patients and their families will be left with questions unanswered as to how this could have happened in the first place and left waiting for the assurances they want that patient safety will never again be compromised to this extent," she said.

Welcoming the statutory duty of candour and penalties for executives who withheld important information, Jordan said questions remained "as to what will happen to less senior members of staff who are found to withhold information or cover up inexcusable mistakes".

Emma Jones, from the law firm Leigh Day, who represented over 120 victims of abuse at Stafford hospital in successful claims for compensation, called Hunt's measures "a small step in the right direction to keep the NHS true to its founding principles and the envy of the world." She said the duty of candour "needs to apply to individual hospital employees as well as the hospital itself. The majority of my clients complained about their treatment and care but either received a very bland or misleading response or no response at all."

But the NHS Employers organisation however was lukewarm about the new obligation. Dean Royles, its chief executive, said that while such a requirement "makes sense … we need to beware the law of unintended consequences. You don't improve culture by creating a climate of fear."

Francis said that although ministers had not accepted all his 290 recommendations, "the government's statement indicates its determination to make positive changes to the culture of the NHS, in part by adopting some of my recommendations and in part through other initiatives."

This article is courtesy of theguardian.

How prisoners have won £10 million in compensation in the past five years for negligence or injury

Compensation payments to prisoners have totalled more than £10 million in five years.

The staggering sum was paid out to inmates who claimed they were 'harmed' while behind bars.

Payments are made for medical negligence, accidents resulting in injury, or attacks by other prisoners.

Inmates can also claim per day payments for being kept in jail after the end of their sentence, as a result of administrative delays in letting them out.

The sum is on top of almost £60,000 a day on legal aid for inmates to help them claim compensation in the first place.

Thousands in legal aid can also be paid to those looking for softer punishments, or to demand release from their sentence.

Official Ministry of Justice figures showed a total of £10,125,845 in compensation over the last five financial years.

Last year it was nearly £1.6million, with one inmate receiving £125,000, and another £100,000 - both for medical negligence.
 
It is thought one of these payments was for a criminal at Brixton prison who fell out of his bunk and sued after suffering a brain injury.

 Three prisoners were given £25,000 each for 'false imprisonment' - when they were kept inside despite their sentence ending.

 A total of 22 offenders were handed sums of between £10,000 and £20,000. Thirty-one inmates received cheques of between £5,000 and £10,000.

 Nearly 250 were paid smaller sums of between £1,000 and £5,000, many relating to delays in processing release papers, which can lead to prisoners spending too long behind bars.

In 2005 a prisoner was paid £2.8 million, reportedly to an inmate who required long-term medical care because of 'self-harm' committed in jail.

In a separate case, £1.14 million went to former prisoner Gregg Marston, of Shoeburyness, Essex, who was left crippled when a doctor failed to send him for an urgent examination.

His case, which was settled out of court, centred on his treatment at Chelmsford jail in Essex in February 2000.

He was taken there after failing to appear at court for driving offences committed in breach of the terms of his release from a four-year sentence for burglary.

Marston complained of back pain when he arrived at the jail but was not referred to hospital until the next day.

As part of his legal action, a consultant in spinal injuries told the Prison Service that, if Marston had been referred a day earlier, he might have undergone surgery to save the use of his legs.

The legal aid bill for prisoners' totalled £21.6million over the past two years - sparking fears of a flurry of human rights based complaints.

Inmates can demand lawyers to represent them at Parole Board hearings to insist they should be released, to fight disciplinary cases in prison or for complaining about conditions.

Among those claiming compensation is Soham killer Ian Huntley who wants up to £95,000 for being attacked in jail.

He said the Prison Service failed in its duty of care towards him after his throat was slashed by another inmate in March last year.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'The vast majority of prisoners' compensation claims are relatively trivial, do not merit financial redress, and are dismissed at an early stage.

'All claims are robustly defended, and would only be settled on the basis of strong legal advice, and in order to seek the best value for the taxpayer.

'Compensation would then be determined following judicial guidelines and a full analysis of the available evidence.' 

This article is courtesy of the Daily Mail.

Seven patients implanted with defective hip replacements at a US hospital are suing the HSE for damages.

Seven patients implanted with defective hip replacements at a US hospital are suing the HSE for damages.

It arises from the global recall of two devices by DePuy, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, in 2010.

The HSE has confirmed that 56 patients - both public and private - who had hip surgery at the Mid-Western Regional Orthopaedic Hospital in Croom were found to have had the implants concerned. And six patients – including referrals from outside the region – have had corrective surgery in Croom.

While DePuy has agreed to cover medical costs – including diagnostic tests and corrective surgery – and “out-of-pocket” expenses for travel and accommodation, it has not to date admitted liability as hundreds of Irish patients prepare to seek compensation in the courts.

Solicitor Peter McDonnell, an expert in medical negligence cases, is to host an information seminar on the DePuy recall at the Clarion Hotel this Wednesday (2pm). Patients, he said, deserved generous compensation from the company for ongoing medical complications and loss of earnings from reduced mobility.

The products concerned, he told the Leader, were marketed at relatively young patients and he had on his book many people formerly employed in construction who could “no longer earn a living”. Mr McDonnell said he was already representing up to 50 Limerick patients who had procedures in private hospitals in Cork, Waterford, Kilkenny and Tralee as well as a client who had the surgery done in Croom.

A spokesman for the HSE said around 3,500 of the implants were sold in Ireland.

“Figures from the UK have shown that up to 13% of patients with these implants have had to undergo a revision surgery within five years of their initial operation. Only a minority of patients who have had the DePuy ASR implant actually need further surgery. Fifty-six patients, public and private, operated on in Croom were identified as having the DePuy hip implant. There have been six revision surgeries and included in this figure are patients referred from other areas such as Cork and Waterford. Any correspondence received from solicitors in relation to ASR is copied to the State Claims Agency; currently there are seven claims,” the spokesman said

The Oireachtas health committee was told last year that the HSE had been named as defendants in about 100 DePuy hip cases.

Evidence was heard at the committee of ongoing pain and nerve and muscular damage suffered by the patients concerned. Patients have also expressed concern over the long-term effects - including possible organ damage - of cobalt and chromium leakage from DePuy products into the bloodstream.

Victims have been encouraged by that the company settled and compensated patients in the United States last year but there has been no admission of liability to date in Ireland.

Barrister Sara Antoniotti told the Oireachtas hearing last year she expected the company to mount a full defence.

This article is courtesy of Limerick Leader.