Articles Posted in Emergency Medical Services

During an endoscopy procedure at a surgery center, Nicholas Merlo’s oxygen saturation declined. A surgery center employee called 911. Emergency medical crews from American Ambulance arrived. Merlo was intubated and transported to the nearest hospital.

Enroute to the hospital, paramedics in the ambulance allegedly noted that Merlo had no breath sounds on one side and that his oxygen levels had dropped. Multiple attempts to reintubate Merlo in the back of the ambulance were unsuccessful.

When Merlo did arrive at the hospital, he suffered cardiac arrest. That lack of oxygen resulted in hypoxic brain damage. Merlo, 39, is now in a permanent vegetative state.
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William Dukes was under the care of Prompt Ambulance Central Inc. when he suffered a fatal injury. He was survived by his minor son.

The Dukes family and estate sued Prompt Ambulance and Kindred Nursing Centers Limited Partnership, alleging that they chose not to provide adequate care and treatment when transporting him by ambulance.

Before trial, the parties settled for $187,000. The Dukes family then petitioned the court for additional damages to be paid from the Patient’s Compensation Fund of Indiana. The court then did authorize $440,000 in payment to the Dukes estate from that fund.
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Ms. Doe, 47 years old, suffered from multiple sclerosis and used a walker. After visiting an urgent care clinic, she became tired and tried to sit down on her walker. The walker flipped over and Ms. Doe hit her head on the pavement. A physician’s assistant at the clinic palpated the injury and stitched Ms. Doe’s wound before discharging her with verbal instructions.

Ms. Doe fell into a coma approximately five hours later. She was taken by ambulance to a hospital where testing revealed a skull fracture and intracranial hemorrhage with midline shift. Despite undergoing neurosurgery, Ms. Doe now suffers from severe cognitive issues and requires 24-hour-per-day care.

Ms. Doe sued the urgent care clinic, alleging that it chose not to transfer her to a hospital emergency room after the fall in light of her neurological symptoms, including one-sided weakness. The lawsuit also alleged that the urgent care clinic should have sent Ms. Doe home with written, not verbal instructions.
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Ms. Doe, age 47, suffered from multiple sclerosis and used a walker. After she visited an urgent care clinic, she became tired and tried to sit down on her walker. The walker flipped over and Ms. Doe hit her head on the pavement.

A physician’s assistant at the clinic treated the injury and stitched Ms. Doe’s wound before discharging her with only verbal instructions.

Ms. Doe lapsed into a coma approximately five hours later. She was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital where testing revealed a skull fracture and intracranial hemorrhage with midline shift.
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Shane Ackerschott was injured at work. He went to RediCare Urgent Care Clinic, which was run by Mountain View Hospital. Ackerschott, 40 years old at the time, experienced numbness below the waist and severe pain when he arrived at this clinic.

He was at the clinic for several hours and consulted with a nurse and family physician who had him raise his legs, touch his toes, and move up and down, among other things. However, his symptoms worsened.

After he walked to the facility’s X-ray room, he collapsed. He was transported to Mountain View Hospital where he was diagnosed with having a spinal cord injury at T10-11, resulting in paraplegia.
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A 20-year-old new mother identified as Ms. Doe collapsed at her home a week after delivering her baby prematurely. Two paramedics employed by Capital Health System Inc. arrived at her home. A student paramedic was training with the paramedics and was allowed to establish and monitor Ms. Doe’s airway before she was transported to the hospital. At the hospital, it was discovered that Ms. Doe’s endotracheal tube had been placed incorrectly.

Ms. Doe later died and was survived by her father and her infant child.

Ms. Doe’s father sued Capital Health System claiming that it chose not to act in good faith and allowed the student ENT to attempt to intubate Ms. Doe.
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Robert Dardenne experienced chest pain. With that symptom he went to a nearby hospital emergency department where the cardiologist on his case, Dr. Vibhuti Singh, ordered testing and observation at the hospital. After two days, Dr. Singh discharged Dardenne, telling him that his symptoms were not cardiac in nature.

Several months later, Dardenne, then 66 years old, suffered a fatal myocardial infarction. He was survived by his wife and one adult child.

His family and estate sued the hospital, claiming that Dr. Singh was negligent in choosing not to provide the appropriate follow-up medical care. The lawsuit also claimed that the testing was ambiguous and thus Dr. Singh should have performed a cardiac catheterization to determine whether Dardenne had a blockage in his arteries.
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Virginia Schneider, 18, went to Griffin Hospital to be treated for a severe asthma attack. In the process of evaluating her condition, emergency physicians Dr. Gregory Boris and Dr. Alyssa French learned of her left leg pain and numbness. The doctors ordered an ultrasound to rule out a blood clot. When the ultrasound revealed an abnormality in the popliteal artery, the doctors consulted the on-call vascular surgeon, Dr. Marsel Huribal.

Dr. Huribal instructed the emergency room physicians to order a CT scan, which was read offsite by a radiologist, Dr. Jennifer Bryant. Although the full text of Dr. Bryant’s report was never transmitted to the hospital, Dr. French learned and later informed Dr. Huribal that there was a portion of the artery in Schneider’s leg that appeared to be blocked. Nevertheless, Dr. Huribal concluded that she did not have a blood clot.

The next day, radiologist Dr. Gregory Bell reviewed the CT scan and contacted Dr. Huribal who reiterated that he did not believe that Schneider had a blood clot. Over the following weekend, her condition deteriorated rapidly. At an appointment several days later, her foot was found to lack pulses, and she was rushed to the hospital. Despite multiple procedures to restore circulation in the leg, it was concluded that her leg had to be amputated.
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Ana Pereira, 29, was admitted to Monmouth Medical Center where she was diagnosed as having a kidney stone and renal colic. Her condition continued to deteriorate. Blood cultures were positive for bacterial growth by noon of the next day. Pereira underwent a successful procedure to drain her kidney after one failed attempt. However, she developed sepsis.

As a result of the sepsis, Pereira fell into a coma for 5 days and suffered a loss of peripheral circulation. Because of the lack of circulation, bilateral leg amputations and the removal of her left hand at the wrist were necessary.

Pereira sued four physicians who treated her at the medical center alleging negligent treatment of the kidney stone. She also alleged that an on-call urologist chose not to timely report to the hospital when the facility notified his employer of her condition. Pereira claimed that the employer of the urologist had contracted to handle emergency calls from the hospital despite the one-hour driving distance between the practice and the hospital, which precluded a medically acceptable response time.
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In this Cook County, Ill., medical malpractice and wrongful death case, the hospital, Sisters of Saint Francis Health Services Inc. and Dr. Perry Marshall D.O. have appealed the jury’s verdict in favor of the family of the decedent, Georgia Tagalos.

On July 9, 2006, the plaintiff, Ted Fragogiannis accompanied by his mother, Georgia Tagalos, went to visit a friend in Bourbonnais, Ill. She was a long-time sufferer of asthma. During the ride home, Fragogiannis noticed that his mother began wheezing and gasping for air. She used two different inhalers, but her condition did not improve. She went into respiratory distress. Fragogiannis called 911 and arranged for an ambulance to meet them on the highway and take his mother to the hospital. According to the paramedics’ protocol, Tagalos was taken to St. Francis Hospital, which was the nearest hospital.

Tagalos arrived at the hospital at 1:45 p.m. and at that point she could no longer speak, but she was still responsive. Dr. Marshall was the emergency room’s attending physician. He was summoned by the nurse to address what had become a respiratory emergency. Dr. Marshall was at Tagalos’s bedside within minutes, but the parties disagreed about how many minutes elapsed. Dr. Marshall instructed a fourth year emergency room resident physician to see Ms. Tagalos and indicated that she might need to be intubated. The fourth year emergency resident, Dr. Julie Mills, assessed the patient and determined that an emergency intubation was required. At 1:56 p.m., 11 minutes after arriving at the hospital and while Dr. Mills was preparing for intubation, Tagalos became unresponsive.

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