medical malpractice

February 14, 2019

Hospital Mergers, Bad Doctors, Endanger Massachusetts Patients

Hospital mergers are in the news again, the latest warning sign when it comes to the risk of patient injury or death in the U.S. healthcare system.

The nation’s largest hospital and health-care conglomerates often tout economies of scale and improved services when announcing acquisitions or otherwise swallowing up the competition. However, The New York Times became the latest media outlet to question those assertions when it published a report this month that found a decline in level of care associated with hospital mergers.

While such mergers may offer cost-savings and other economies for providers, they result in fewer choices for patients and physicians, higher prices, and reduced quality of care, including an increase in mortality and major health setbacks as competition falls.

Our medical malpractice lawyers in Boston continue to fight for patient rights as the profit-motive erodes what few safeguards exist when it comes to protecting the American healthcare consumer from bad doctors, dangerous hospitals, deadly pharmaceuticals and defective medical products.

April 25, 2018

Who Can File A Wrongful Death Lawsuit in Massachusetts

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

Massachusetts state law is what controls the aspects of a wrongful death lawsuit that deals with who has the right to file the lawsuit in court. Typically, only immediate family members of the victim have standing to sue the person or entity that caused the death. But the definition of immediate family is something a court may have to decide in today’s more flexible familial standards.

For the most part, it is simple to determine the immediate family that will seek such a claim. These would be a spouse, including domestic partners, and children of the deceased.

A partner who is not married or registered domestic partner, may have to file a special request to the court to get permission to file a wrongful death lawsuit. The same special permission may be required for step children or parents. If you fall within one of these classifications, the other side will challenge your right to collect in a wrongful death lawsuit. This is why it is important to hire experienced Massachusetts personal injury attorneys for your case.

April 24, 2018

Brighton Motor Vehicle Accident

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

Boston Emergency Medical Services authorities report today that several first responders were dispatched to Soldiers Field Road.

First responders were dispatch in response to a call for a motor vehicle accident.

The call came late in the evening today.

No further information is available at this time.

March 24, 2018

Report: Surgery Centers Gain Steam at Cost to Patient Well-Being

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

Not long ago, a series of mistakes at an eye surgery clinic in West Springfield resulted in five patients suffering from blindness. Each had been operated on the same Tuesday morning in what was promised to be a quick, 15-minute outpatient procedure. Blindness in general is a rare complication for such a surgery which should have raised a red flag. Five occurrences in the same day at the same clinic while undergoing the same procedure seems unprecedented, and the allegations are that the doctor used a needle to inject patients with anesthesia rather than offer a less risky alternative. One of those patients later won a $1.3 million verdict, while other cases are pending.

What this case has in common with a growing number of other Massachusetts medical malpractice lawsuits is the fact that it occurred at a surgical center. A recent analysis by USA Today and Kaiser Health News revealed that as surgical centers have risen in popularity, obtaining approval for an ever-expanding range of complex procedures, despite having a lack of training and state-of-the-art life-saving equipment.

The report indicated there are more than 5,600 surgical centers across the country. These facilities first started gaining steam about five decades ago, touted as a lower cost alternative for those seeking relatively minor procedures. However, now the number of surgery centers has dwarfed the number of hospitals. Although any surgical procedure has the potential for complications, there is no question that hospitals on the whole are better equipped to handle emergencies than these surgical centers. Continue reading

August 1, 2017

Medical Malpractice Cases and Medical Battery

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

When we are dealing with a medical malpractice cases, we are typically dealing with action founded under a theory of negligence. In a standard negligence case, the elements of the tort are duty, breach, causation, and damages. The duty is a duty of due care to act as a reasonable and prudent person so as to prevent a foreseeable injury to foreseeable persons and property.

In the case of medical malpractice, we use the same standard, but instead of the reasonable and prudent person, we use a reasonable and prudent medical professional performing that same procedure. For example, in the case of heart surgeon preforming an operation, a surgeon is supposed to act as reasonable and prudent heart surgeon would act in performing the same procedure. Continue reading

June 19, 2017

Boston Medical Malpractice Claims Against OB/GYNs Must Be Filed Within Statute of Limitations

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

One of the more complex types of Boston personal injury litigation is medical malpractice. It occurs any time we go to the doctor as a serious illness could be misdiagnosed leading to serious personal injury or even death. However, many medical malpractice cases result from incidents that occur in a hospital setting.

What people may not realize is that when we seek treatment at a hospital, we are in fact trusting our care to many different people – some of whom we may never see – and that there is ample opportunity for circumstances to go horribly wrong. Health care providers frequently found liable for medical malpractice are those who assist women in childbirth. In fact, one Medscape survey in 2015 noted that 85 percent of OB/GYN physicians will be sued for medical malpractice at some point in their careers.

That same survey indicated the most common reasons OB/GYNs are sued are because of:

Patient suffering abnormal injury;
Failure to diagnose;
Failure to treat;
Poor documentation of patient instruction/ education;
Improperly obtaining/ lack of informed consent;
Failure to follow safety procedures;
Medication errors.

These mistakes can occur during pregnancy, or at some point during labor or in the course of delivery. The impact of a medical mistake on the mother and child can be devastating and lifelong. However, the amount of time you have to file a claim is not infinite. The statute of limitations limits the amount of time you have to assert a claim.

March 15, 2017

Medical Malpractice for a Lost Chance of a Better Outcome

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

In Massachusetts medical malpractice law, the “loss of chance” doctrine permits recovery of damages for the destruction or reduction of the prospect of achieving a more favorable outcome.

Plaintiffs are the ones who bear the burden in these cases of showing that the physician or other medical professional:

Deviated from the accepted standard of care;
Deviation proximately caused the injury (i.e., the loss was a foreseeable consequence of negligence and the negligence was a but-for cause of the loss of harm).

Causation of injuries in medical malpractice lawsuits is always proven through expert witness testimony. The loss of chance doctrine is usually applied to cases wherein plaintiff had a 50 percent or less chance of survival or some better outcome prior to the alleged negligence of the doctor. In cases where a plaintiff had a 50 percent or greater chance of survival/ better outcome prior to the alleged wrongful act, courts will usually apply the “more likely than not” standard. That requires plaintiff to prove it is “more likely than not” he or she would have had a better outcome were it not for defendant’s actions. The reason is under traditional concepts of causation, a plaintiff with less than 50 percent chance of a positive outcome wouldn’t have grounds for a claim. The loss of chance doctrine gives them a platform. Continue reading

February 4, 2017

Special Verdict in Medical Malpractice Lawsuit

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

In a recent case from the Supreme Court of California, the case was tried before a jury, and jurors returned what is known as a special verdict. A normal verdict form is simply one that asks if the defendant is liable or not, and if the defendant is liable, then the jury is expected to also decide the amount of damages (financial compensation) that should be awarded to the plaintiff. If there is no finding of negligence, then there is obviously not a need to return an award of damages.

However, there can also be special verdict forms that ask jurors to separately decide on different elements of a tort ,such as negligence, because in some cases, additional elements must be established for certain penalties and monetary awards to be triggered. In this case, the jury returned a special verdict that found defendant was negligent in treating defendant, but that their negligent treatment was not responsible for him becoming a quadriplegic. Continue reading

September 26, 2016

Parr v. Rosenthal: Medical Malpractice Cases

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

In Parr v. Rosenthal, a case from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the plaintiffs had filed a medical malpractice case against the defendants in the Superior Court. In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, The Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is our state supreme court and the Superior Court is our highest level trial court.

In this case, plaintiff was born in 1994 with a large lump on his right calf. His parents took him to Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in downtown Boston to have this lump examined. After being examined, doctors referred the child to what they call the sarcoma group to have the lumped imaged and a biopsy taken. Continue reading

September 23, 2016

Baptist Ventures, Inc. v. Hoke: Personal Injury Cases

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

In Baptist Ventures, Inc. v. Hoke, a personal injury appeal for the Supreme Court of Alabama, plaintiff was allegedly injured as a result of medical treatment she received from the defendants. The defendants in this case run an Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) medical practice. Plaintiff was a patient of defendants.

In April 2011, plaintiff went to defendants’ medical clinic to have a procedure performed. One day prior to the two-year anniversary of this doctor’s visit, the plaintiff filed a medical malpractice lawsuit claiming that the defendants had provided care that fell below the acceptable standard of due care, and as a result of the breach of the duty of care, she was injured. Continue reading