Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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The Archives of Internal Medicine released a new report revealing that roughly 48,000 people a year in the U.S., including patients in the state of Illinois, are killed as a result of pneumonia and sepsis caused by hospital-acquired infections. Not only did this take an obvious toll on the survival rate of patients nationwide, but it also increased U.S. healthcare costs by $8.1 billion within a single year. Some of these Illinois cases could have been the result of Illinois medical malpractice or Illinois nursing negligence.

Both pneumonia and sepsis are caused by potentially deadly microbes, which includes the well-known Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), an antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Sepsis is a potentially lethal, systemic response to infection wherein the body’s bloodstream is overwhelmed by bacteria, that can eventually lead to massive organ failure. Pneumonia is an infection limited to the lungs and respiratory tract that can also be fatal. The study reports that it analyzed 69 million discharge records from hospitals in 40 different states.

The increase in hospital costs is mostly due to the fact that patients who acquire pneumonia or sepsis in the hospital typically require longer stays and more care than those who don’t. For example, the study found that patients that developed sepsis after surgery were hospitalized 11 additional days than those patients who did not develop sepsis, which increased the hospital costs by $33,000 per patient. And for those patients who acquired pneumonia after surgery, their hospital stay was lengthened an additional 14 days, leading to additional costs of $46,000 per patient.

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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it is working with other entities to launch The Initiative to Reduce Unnecessary Radiation Exposure from Medical Imaging. The purpose of the initiative is to promote safer use of all relevant medical imaging devices, to support and increase the degree of clinical decision making, and to further patient awareness.

This initiative is part of a growing movement to increase the safety of life-saving diagnostic and therapeutic radiation and prevent Illinois radiology errors from occurring. The FDA has promised to take steps towards increasing its regulatory supervision of some of the more powerful forms of medical radiation, including fluoroscopy, CT scans, and nuclear medicine.

Some of these forms of radiology can deliver enough radiation in one exposure to equal almost 400 chest x-rays. Obviously with scans this powerful it is important that the medical community is making informative decisions as to the appropriateness of their use and practicing safe administration of these tests.

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An Illinois medical malpractice case recently was settled, avoiding an Illinois jury trial regarding the death of an Illinois man with undiagnosed bladder cancer. The Illinois medical malpractice lawsuit revolved around the urologist who allegedly failed to diagnose the man’s bladder cancer in a timely manner.

The case calls to mind the importance of securing a timely diagnosis in Illinois cancer cases, where just a few months delay may result in drastic differences in the cancer’s staging and in the patient’s chance of a positive outcome.

In this particular case the man had first been referred to the urologist for a second opinion regarding continued complaints of urinary tract difficulties. The defendant doctor determined that the man’s symptoms were behavioral, meaning that they had more to do with the patient’s mental state than with his physical state. In light of this diagnosis, which was later found to be unfounded, the doctor decided that these symptoms did not present any risk to the patients lower or upper urinary tracts.

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As patients we trust that our doctors are operating in our best interests rather than their own. Furthermore we expect to be treated not as dollar signs, but as people.
Unfortunately a recent Cook County medical malpractice case that came before an Illinois Appellate Court demonstrates that this is not always the reality. In Martinez v. Elias, et al., No. 1-08-0265, the plaintiff claimed that an orthopedic surgeon performed unnecessary surgery on his back and was motivated to do so for financial gain.

The trial jury agreed with the plaintiff and found against the defendant surgeon. The defendant doctor appealed the case on the claim that the trial court had erred in allowing the admission of evidence of the surgeon’s financial motive for the surgery. However, the Illinois Appellate Court disagreed with the defendant and affirmed the Cook County medical malpractice verdict.

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