The Lawrence Firm Blog

UnitedHealth Group, a national provider of health insurance to residents of Ohio, Kentucky and other states, was recently ordered to pay $500 million in punitive damages to plaintiffs in a Las Vegas civil lawsuit. The three plaintiffs, who will share the hospital malpractice damage award, had claimed that the company contracted with a clinic whose practices infected the victims with hepatitis. The original lawsuit requested $2.5 billion in damages. Instead,

Routine wisdom tooth surgery turned deadly for one teen when she was deprived of oxygen during an extraction procedure. For parents in Ohio as well as throughout the country, the fear of hospital malpractice is at its highest when children are involved. In this case, the parents chose to file a malpractice lawsuit against the healthcare professionals involved in the teen’s death. The 17-year-old girl died after routine surgery to

Ohio residents may have seen a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that shows surprising results. According to the report, shorter hours for residents actually increased medical errors by 15 to 20 percent. The original purpose of the study was to determine if decreasing hours that doctors worked without a break from 30 to 16 would decrease incidents of hospital malpractice. However, the results seem

Errors on the part of hospitals, doctors and other healthcare providers affect more than 1 million people each year. Hospital errors can be physically disabling but they can also have serious mental consequences for the victims and their families. Many victims suffer relationship problems, sleep patterns, and depression. Patients from Ohio to Kentucky and elsewhere who have suffered from medical errors now have a new voice through a Facebook group.

Ohio and Kentucky residents may have heard that a group of medical experts reported that almost 100 common procedures are overused and may be unnecessary. In some cases, these procedures can even be harmful and may lead to hospital errors or other complications that cause danger for patients. CT scans for head injuries, early C-sections, and Pap smears are on the list of overused and possibly dangerous procedures and treatments.

One Kentucky hospital and several cardiologists are facing lawsuits filed by patients who claim that they underwent unnecessary procedures. These hospital errors are being disputed by the defendants, although there is other evidence suggesting that there may have been unnecessary surgeries, catheterizations, and other procedures performed on patients. Altogether, 400 patients are involved in the lawsuit along with 11 cardiologists. The hospital, located in the Kentucky city of London, was

The possibility of medical malpractice is always present, but some believe that the health care industry itself may be to blame. Between the physician, the hospital, the pharmacy and the insurance company involved in a patient’s care, there is a great deal of room for hospital errors and miscommunication. Mistakes can occur at any point during a patient’s treatment. When a patient first enters the doctor’s office, his or her

Ohio residents may be surprised to learn that copying and pasting patient care notes made by other doctors and medical staff in electronic health records or EHRs is a very common practice. It is such an epidemic that one doctor and professor at a major medical university said that it has a name – “sloppy and paste.” Imagine you or a loved one is a patient in a hospital and

A recent study found that many doctor and hospital errors regarding patient information may be due to a bad and widespread habit: copying and pasting old information into electronic records. Because so many hospitals and doctors’ offices are cutting staff in an attempt to keep costs low, record keeping can be plagued by shortcuts. One of the most potentially dangerous practices is that of copying out-of-date information into new notes,

Advocates of the use of electronic health records contend that the digitalization of medical records can reduce hospital errors, but a recent study suggests that this may not be the case. The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority Report examined almost 3,100 error reports from hospitals in the state to determine if there were mistakes related to electronic records. They found that nearly 4,000 errors were related to EHRs between 2004 and

A woman was allegedly the victim of bedsores that went undiagnosed for a protracted period at a hospital. The family has filed a lawsuit alleging that hospital errors led to the woman’s death. The hospital, another care facility and a nurse are named in the suit. According to the claims in the suit, the victim was admitted to the hospital with clear skin, but had developed bedsores by the time

Most people worry that hospital errors will occur during their stay. However, many do not realize that patients also have a good chance of being forced to return to the hospital within 30 days of discharge due to complications or problems related to the patient’s stay. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine states that about 20 percent of Medicare patients return to the hospital within a month