New York Medical Malpractice

High medical malpractice premiums have forced a Brooklyn hospital to completely shutter their obstetrics ward, which currently staffs 350 people. Long Island College Hospital in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn has taken on roughly $170 million in debt with 33% of that coming from the obstetrics department which has higher malpractice premiums than most [...]

Some very disturbing news today out of Massachusetts regarding wrongful surgeries done in the state. From Boston.com:
Surgeons in Massachusetts have operated in the wrong location on patients 38 times since 2006, with botched spine surgeries accounting for more of the mistakes than any other type of operation, according to a Globe review of state documents.
A [...]

The federal government released a report this week regarding the costs of medical malpractice as it relates to extra care after mistakes are made in hospitals. From ABC.com:

The records indicated that one of every 10 patients who died within 90 days of surgery died because of a preventable error and one-third of the deaths occurred [...]

Can being nice save malpractice? The tgllaw.com blog raises some interesting questions that stem from an article in the New York Times. Both pieces are worth a read, but this is what tgllaw.com had to say:
Can you put a dollar value on being nice? In essence that is the question posed by the Joint [...]

ABC is currently running a six part series entitled “Hopkins”, where doctors at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore are profiled showing their everyday lives as caregivers and major life and death decisions they have to make on the fly. In this video clip, we see a doctor make his first mistake on the job, and [...]

A 15 year old Boston teen was killed recently when a power outage caused his ventilator to fail, prompting an investigation into the failure. In an interesting move, the Boston Police Department and the Suffolk county district attorney’s office decided to turn the ventilator over to the manufacturer to be examined. The particular ventilator fell [...]

Many physicians, especially those in the field of obstetrics, are having to make huge career changing decisions in the last few months because of skyrocketing medical malpractice premiums. Doctors in the Lower Hudson Valley area of New York is being especially hard hit, and even more say they will change their practice if state lawmakers [...]

In the past, physicians have received notifications from the FDA regarding safety alerts to various medications on paper. Now, the recently launched Health Care Notification Network will send any safety alerts to doctors and hospitals via email. The new system is believed to bring down the risk of malpractice litigation.

“The majority of U.S. liability [...]

AmericanProgress.org weighs in on medical malpractice lawsuits:
 

Myth: Medical malpractice lawsuits are little more than predatory lawyers destroying honest doctors; caps should be set on the amount awarded to accusers.
Truth: Although the malpractice system is deeply flawed, setting caps deflects attention from patient safety and would likely not reduce frivolous lawsuits or costly premiums.
Medical malpractice liability [...]

A Niagara County jury recently awarded a $9 million malpractice settlement to the family of a woman who died in 2004, making it the largest sum to ever be awarded by the court. The physician in question is a highly esteemed Western New York surgeon by the name of Nancy J. Stubbe, who was cited [...]