Articles Posted in Hospital Errors

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Jerry Medlin, 60, underwent cataract surgery in his left eye. The surgery was completed by an ophthalmologist, Dr. Timothy Young. During the surgery, Dr. Young called for VisionBlue, a staining solution used in cataract surgeries. A nurse during surgery tried unsuccessfully to retrieve the solution from the hospital’s automated medication dispensing system. She then typed “blue” into the system, which gave her the option to receive Methylene Blue.

The nurse took the Methylene Blue to the operating room and told the doctor that she had the drug. A technologist also announced the name of the same drug and then drew up a syringe, which Dr. Young injected into Medlin’s eye.

Medlin suffered toxic anterior segment syndrome. Despite a corneal grafting procedure, Medlin is now blind in his left eye. He filed a lawsuit against the hospital, Dr. Young and his practice, claiming negligent administration of a toxic substance. The lawsuit did not claim lost income.

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A Minnesota Appellate Court has held that expert testimony was required to prove a plaintiff’s claim that the paramedic’s negligent transfer was the cause of a patient’s ankle injury and later resulted in a leg amputation.

Mary C. suffered from various health problems and was a left-leg amputee. After she developed respiratory problems, Mary called an ambulance. When the ambulance arrived, she was being moved from her wheelchair to a stretcher. While she was being moved, she suffered a fractured right ankle. This fracture led to unsuccessful ankle surgeries followed by infection and ultimately the amputation of her right leg.

Mary C. sued the ambulance service, alleging its paramedics were negligent in transferring her to the stretcher and caused her fall and ankle fracture, which ultimately led to the amputation of her right leg. The defendant moved to dismiss, arguing that Mary had failed to serve the required affidavit of expert identification within the statutory time frame. The court granted defendant’s (the ambulance service) motion to dismiss.

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General practitioner physician Dr. Ram Thawani was the attending physician for Peter Gates during his hospitalization at Chicago’s South Shore Hospital on Oct. 23, 2009. Gates, 57, died from a brain herniation, which is a swelling of the brain, and a brain hemorrhage on Oct. 29, 2009. Gates was survived by his wife and seven daughters.

The Gates family filed a lawsuit against Dr. Thawani claiming that he was negligent in choosing not to order a CT scan of the head, despite complaints of severe headaches with pain, described as level 10 on a scale of 1-10. Gates was also taking a blood thinner, Coumadin, at the time.

The defendant doctor argued that the headaches had waxed and waned and were associated with a fever of recent onset. He also said there was no focal neurological deficits to point to any problem in the brain, and the brain hemorrhage was a sudden event that no surgical intervention could have averted.

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The state of South Dakota has imposed a medical malpractice cap that leaves many who are injured or killed without a remedy. It was reported recently that a young woman who brought herself to a hospital in Sioux Falls, S.D., because she was carrying a dead fetus for removal from her uterus found things going from bad to worse.

The hospital did a procedure to remove the fetus, but things in the recovery room left the woman in shock. The doctor who examined her did not notice that the first doctor who removed the fetus had perforated her uterus during the procedure. She was literally bleeding to death.

A nurse eventually noticed that something was wrong and rushed the woman back to the operating room where the doctors performed emergency surgery to remove her uterus. She survived the ordeal, but lost the ability to have children.

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On Jan. 8, 2008, Nicole Yerkovich, who was 35 at the time, was taken by ambulance to the emergency department at LaGrange Memorial Hospital because of severe abdominal pain and nausea. The ER doctor at the hospital ordered a contrast CT scan of her abdomen and pelvis to see if she was suffering from an appendicitis attack. The CT scan was initially read by a teleradiologist who reported she could not visualize the appendix and therefore could not rule out appendicitis. The teleradiologist recommended the hospital’s doctors obtain the delayed images to get better visualizations of the appendix and noted a moderate amount of free fluid in the pelvis, which could have been due to a ruptured cyst.

The following morning, the in-house radiologist, Dr. Vladislav Gorengaut, reviewed the same CT scan and reported there were no definite findings to suggest appendicitis. He noted there were ascites, which may be caused by peritonitis, and there could be a gynecological issue such as a ruptured hemorrhagic ovarian cyst. Ascites refer to the accumulation of fluid in the peritoneal cavity in the abdominal area.

Based upon the first report of Dr. Gorengaut, the emergency department doctor canceled the delayed CT scan and instead admitted Yerkovich to gynecology and ordered a pelvic ultrasound. Dr. Gorengaut read the ultrasound and reported there was echogenic fluid most likely representing blood from a ruptured ovarian cyst.

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At issue in this South Carolina Supreme Court case was whether the medical malpractice statute of repose applied to indemnify the claim of Columbia/CSA-HS Greater Columbia Healthcare System — also known as Providence Hospital. The trial court in the Court of Appeals in South Carolina held that it does and thus barred the indemnity action brought by Providence Hospital. Because the statute of repose barred the indemnify action brought by the Providence Hospital, the Supreme Court of South Carolina affirmed the lower court’s and the appellate court’s decision.

In 1997, Dr. Michael Hayes and Dr. Michael Taillon were working as emergency room physicians at Providence Hospital as independent contractors. Arthur Sharpe came to Providence Hospital in the emergency room on the same date. He was complaining of chest pain. Drs. Hayes and Taillon evaluated Sharpe and diagnosed him as suffering from gastric reflux. Sharpe was then discharged from the hospital; in fact, he had actually suffered a heart attack. That heart attack was determined a few days later when he went to seek other medical care.

Because of the misdiagnosis, on May 25, 1999, Sharpe and his wife filed a medical malpractice and loss of consortium suit against Providence Hospital and Dr. Hayes. The Sharpes did not name Dr. Taillon as a defendant. Providence Hospital settled with the Sharpes on June 10, 2004.

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Latasha Randall was admitted on June 1, 2010 to Vista East Medical Center in Waukegan, Ill., and was diagnosed with sepsis. Shortly after her admission, she suffered respiratory failure and was intubated.

On June 22, 2010, the defendant general surgeon, Dr. Laurence Gibson, performed an open tracheostomy and was assisted by his physician partner, Dr. Aaron Siegel.

After the procedure, 37-year-old Randall’s face was noticeably swollen and post-op x-rays showed subcutaneous emphysema (air outside lungs, under the skin). Three days later, her attending physician transferred her to Kindred Hospital in Chicago for management of her ventilation, but with a grim prognosis due to her sepsis and other lethal illnesses.

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Barbara Watt underwent a hiatal hernia repair surgery. The procedure was carried out by general surgeon Dr. Cimenga Tshibaka, and it was unsuccessful. Dr. Tshibaka performed a second surgery, this time using a synthetic surgical mesh. The second surgery was about 2 weeks after the first.

The following month, Watt was diagnosed as having an esophageal leak, which required nine additional surgeries to, among other things, remove the synthetic mesh that had eroded into her esophagus.

As a result of these many surgeries, Watt must now eat slowly and in limited amounts. She must also wear special undergarments due to scarring and is unable to bend over to lift more than 5 pounds. She also missed time from her job as a financial operations specialist where she was earning $21 per hour.

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A Cook County jury heard evidence in a medical malpractice jury trial related to postoperative physical therapy that was alleged to have caused left knee ligament damage to the patient. The plaintiff in this case was 44-year-old Michele Boucher-Kmiec, who underwent left knee ligament repair surgery at Swedish Covenant Hospital on July 6, 2009. After the surgery, her leg was placed in an immobilizer.

On July 7 and July 8, 2009, the defendant physical therapist Brittany Mynsberge worked with the patient for her physical therapy. The physical therapy order came from Boucher-Kmiec’s surgeon, who did the knee surgery.

In this lawsuit, the plaintiff alleged that physical therapist Mynsberge was negligent in performing range of motion exercises on the post-surgical knee when it was contraindicated. It was also alleged that the physical therapist would have known that such a range of motion exercise was not indicated if she had noticed the immobilizer, which extended from the patient’s buttocks to her toes. It further contended that the defendant physical therapist’s improper therapy caused danger to the repaired medial collateral ligament, which later became infected.

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When the government is the only defendant in a Federal Tort Claims Act, the statute of limitations is two years. It doesn’t matter whether the plaintiff — who is the injured party in a medical negligence case — was a minor at the time of the injury. The statute is clear in that it states that a claim accrues when the plaintiff discovers, or a reasonable person in the plaintiff’s position would have discovered, that she had in fact been injured by an act or omission attributable to the government. The issue in this case was when the two-year countdown started.

Tenille Wallace’s medical-malpractice claim was against two defendants — the federally funded Friend Family Health Center and a private institution, the University of Chicago Hospital. The case presented the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals with a “new twist” on the usual scenario.

Wallace received prenatal care at the Friend Family Health Center. Her son, E.Y., had a troubled delivery and has been diagnosed as suffering from diplegic cerebral palsy. E.Y. was born at the University of Chicago Hospital on April 4, 2005.

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