Chicago Injury Law Blog

In 2005, Illinois enacted a law that was just struck down which placed a $500,000 cap on non-economic damages recoverable by patients against doctors and a $1,000,000 cap in cases against hospitals in medical malpractice cases.  Although the caps were recently overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court, proponents of the caps argued that malpractice claims and verdicts have been rising rapidly, driving doctors out of Illinois and raising health care costs.  However, insurance company data prove these assertions to be false.

Although an increased numbers of medical malpractice claims have been reported, this increase is not due to an increase in filing of cases but due to a change in how the claims are accounted.  Before 2003, ISMIE, Illinois’ largest medical malpractice insurer, counted a claim involving an insured doctor and medical corporation as one claim.  However, in 2003, the reporting system was altered and the doctor and corporation claim was counted as two separate claims.  Consequently, this change greatly increased the number of total medical malpractice claims.  Thus, in 2005, in hearings before the General Assembly regarding payout caps, ISMIE overstated its expectations of future payouts.  Once the cap passed, the insurance company lowered their expected numbers again.

Court records have shown that the annual filings of malpractice lawsuits in Illinois have steadily decreased both before and after the damage caps laws were passed in 2005. The regulatory filings of the insurance companies show that since 2000, the frequency and severity of malpractice claims and payouts have been stable, or decreasing.  Meanwhile, insurance companies have enjoyed record profits, with malpractice insurance rates dramatically rising.  In addition, insurance companies admitted that business conditions and diminished returns due to the state of the market were responsible for the rise in insurance rates, not malpractice lawsuits.

Since the current caps have been overturned, families and individuals whose lives have been greatly impacted by medical malpractice can claim appropriate amounts for injuries sustained. While the caps may seem high, malpractice cases such as Lebron v Gottlieb Hospital, which prompted the Illinois Supreme Court’s action to overturn the caps, show that families are burdened with expenses stemming from medical malpractice for the rest of their lives.

A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) finds that the decision to give patients with advanced dementia feeding tubes depends more on cost concerns than the patient’s well-being. Hundreds of patients surveyed by Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University were given a feeding tube although they had specified in writing that they did not want one.

Feeding tubes do not increase survival for people with dementia who can no longer swallow. Rather, they can cause harm as demented patients often try to remove them, and are then consequently physically restrained or placed on heavy sedatives. Dementia is receiving more recognition as a terminal illness. Trouble eating indicates the arrival of the final stage of the illness, and careful hand feeding can provide the patient with a safer and more comfortable alternative than a feeding tube. However, feeding by hand requires a lot of time and effort.

Cost concerns are likely a significant factor in the large use of feeding tubes. Inserting a feeding tube allows hospitals to discharge patients faster and is less time-consuming for nursing homes. It is difficult to tell if hospitalizing demented patients is helpful, and ultimately financial incentive may be driving this tendency to feeding tube insertion. About a third of nursing home patients with advanced dementia have feeding tubes, and tubes were inserted into two-thirds of these patients while they were in the hospital. For-profit hospitals and larger hospitals are also more likely to use feeding tubes.

The New York Times recently published an article on the lack of scrutiny long-term healthcare hospitals face over their standards of care.  According to the report, Medicare has never closely examined the care provided in these facilities, which are largely run by for-profit companies and have no doctors on staff.  Many are “hospitals within hospitals”, as the company that runs them contracts space from a host hospital so the facility can be opened quickly and cheaply.

These facilities have been cited at a rate of up to four times higher than traditional hospitals for violation of Medicare rules.  They also have a higher rate of patients developing bedsores and serious infections.  Federal reports found that for-profit long-term hospitals spend less on patients and have a higher profit margin comparable to non-profit hospitals.  These reports also detail preventable patient injuries and deaths as well as understaffed facilities. 

The New York Times reported that many of these hospitals will manage how long patients stay to maximize profits, even if it goes against the doctor’s wishes for the patient.  Maximum profit is gained when patients are discharged at or just after their 25^th day. Interestingly, the average length of stay at Select Medical Corp’s hospitals, the company that runs the largest number of long-term hospitals in the U.S., is 24 days. Unfortunately, Medicare has few ways to discipline hospitals, and rarely takes action to decertify a facility.  

Contact an Experienced Attorney

Our attorneys understand how difficult it is for victims or families of victims who have suffered from medical malpractice or negligence.  We work to ensure that you receive the best representation and largest settlement possible.  If you or a loved one has been injured as a result of medical malpractice or negligence in a long-term healthcare facility or another facility, contact us immediately.  We will provide you with a free no-obligation consultation and explain your legal rights.

Recently, the Chicago Tribune reported that powerful medications known as psychotropics were being prescribed to hundreds of Illinois foster children without the mandatory consent of state child welfare officials. During 2007, as many as 240 foster children received these strong medications without consent. Some medical centers, including one of Illinois’ largest psychiatric centers, Streamwood Behavioral Health Center, allegedly used these dangerous drugs as a chemical restraint on youth who needed counseling.

According to a report by the Tribune, the center is extremely understaffed-leading to extremely high rates of emergency psychiatric medication, physical restraint, and seclusion for its young charges. As Illinois DCFS director Erwin McEwen stated in response to the report, “Profiteering at the expense of the mental health of vulnerable children will not be tolerated in Illinois…PSI [the owner of the Streamwood center] needs to develop a different business model if they want to continue caring for our children”. At another facility owned by PSI, John Costigan Residential Center, emergency medication was used at least 30 times more than comparable programs serving similar numbers of foster children.

Since 2007, an increasing number of foster children have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and given mood-altering psychotropic drugs. Prescribing such drugs for children is risky, as some doctors assert they can cause abnormalities in metabolism and significant weight gain in young people. Usage of psychotropics is more risky for foster children, since they lack an adult presence to help monitor the effects of the drugs.

The Chicago Tribune recently reported that Dr. Michael Reinstein, a doctor who frequently gives psychiatric care in Chicago-area nursing homes and mental health facilities, has developed a troubling record. This record involves providing care with an extremely risky drug: Clozapine. Clozapine is a very powerful drug that carries five FDA black box warnings, the strongest warnings the FDA can issue.

According to the Tribune, Mr. Reinstein, exhibits an “unusually heavy reliance” on this powerful drug, and this usage has been linked to at least three deaths in his patients. Records indicate that the doctor is getting government reimbursement for his treatment of patients. Although Dr. Reinstein defends his use of Clozapine as the most effective in its class for treatment of schizophrenic patients, autopsy and court records indicate that three patients under his care died from Clozapine poisoning.

Clozapine is an especially dangerous drug. The FDA’s black box warnings for it include enlargement of the heart, rapid drops in blood pressure, and increased seizure risk. The drug is only approved for actively suicidal patients, or schizophrenic patients who do not improve when using medications with less severe side effects. The drug has not proven safe to use in pregnant patients, however Dr. Reinstein has prescribed it for these patients as well.

If you or a loved one has suffered as a result of being prescribed Clozapine inappropriately, contact the lawyers at the Pintas Law Firm immediately. Our personal injury law firm will provide you with a free legal consultation and explain your legal rights.

And 48,000 to 119,000 hospital patients a year may be dying from methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections, far more than previously thought, the study suggests.

The Tribune obtained the results during the weekend from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control & Epidemiology (APIC), which is releasing the report publicly on Monday. The author is Dr. William Jarvis, former acting director of the hospital infections program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

Read the full article in the Chicago Tribune.

But Thao's intravenous delivery of an epidural pain medication was an unusually public example of a quiet but dangerous health care problem: tubing misconnections.

At least 1,200 times in the past nine years, U.S. hospital workers have inadvertently given patients solutions meant to flow through one tube -- an IV, an epidural, a feeding tube, a bladder catheter, a blood line -- into another tube, frequently causing harm and sometimes death. The true tally is much greater."

Read the full article in the Wisconsin State Journal.

"We had to do something good that would prevent this from ever happening to a child again," Ms. King says. When the hospital offered a financial settlement, Ms. King, a former fashion designer who had become a stay-at-home mom, asked Johns Hopkins to take some of the money back to start a children's safety program. She also created the Josie King Foundation to fund safety initiatives at other hospitals.

Now, to take the message to a broader audience of both consumers and medical professionals, she is launching a new Web site, josieking.org, with her own blog on patient safety; an online community where families can post their medical-error experiences and provide emotional support; advice from medical and legal experts on how to avoid error and deal with it when occurs; and resources for hospitals seeking to improve safety."

Read the full article on the Wall Street Journal Online.

Three days after the surgery, Lewis should be feeling better. Instead, despite doses of a powerful painkiller called Toradol, the boy is racked with agonizing pain -- "five on a scale of five," he pantingly tells his mother, Helen Haskell, an archaeologist. Oddly, the pain seems centered in his abdomen, not his chest. Nurses are certain the boy is suffering from gas, a diagnosis reinforced earlier that evening by Dr. Craig Murray, the chief resident on call. Dr. Murray had stopped by and prescribed a suppository for what he believed was probably constipation, a common problem after surgery."

Americans for Insurance Reform says annual insurance industry numbers show that the amount of money paid for medical malpractice settlements, verdicts and legal defense has remained relatively flat for almost two decades, when adjusted for inflation and accounting for the growing number of doctors nationally.

According to the study — which based its findings on information from A.M. Best & Co., an insurance industry analyst firm — the total amount of money paid was almost $4.9 billion in 2005 nationally. The study calculated that to be a payout of $5,400 dollars per doctor, the lowest since 1981 when adjusted for inflation.

The study's author, a former government official, said those numbers indicate that the rising insurance rates that drove doctors to leave Madison and St. Clair counties can't be the result of the active trial bars of the Metro East area. Instead, market-related forces — poor performance in investment bonds — and bad insurance company management are to blame, said J. Robert Hunter, a former federal insurance administrator during President Gerald Ford's administration. He is now with the Consumer Federation of America.

"The insurance companies have incentives to blame the lawyers," Hunter said. "Otherwise they'd have to blame themselves for mismanagement of economic cycle."

The reason, he contends, is that the amount of money involved in the system brings out one of the more negative human attributes -- greed.

"Unless and until these extraordinary costs unique to the United States are squashed into manageability, there is too much greed and too little control of greed being exercised," said Bennett, a Harvard Medical School graduate, who operates a practice that bases its fees on the ability of his patients to pay. "It does not matter what politician suggests what plan --- Republican or Democratic, that plan will fail."

There are four primary reasons for Bennett's pessimism: the educational debt carried by new doctors; the practice of hospitals "owning" the physicians who are affiliated with them; extraordinarily high prescription drug costs; and the advent of health management organizations, which have assumed a middleman position between patients, health care providers, pharmaceutical companies and hospitals."

Skolnik, of Centennial, appeared at a news conference Tuesday where Health Grades announced it has gone online with the first national data base with information on malpractice settlements against doctors. Information on malpractice judgments, settlements and arbitration awards against doctors from 15 states is available at www.healthgrades.com.

Health Grades, which bills itself as the nation's largest independent health-care rating company, can only make available the information if the states don't shield it, said Sara Loughran, executive vice president."

Read the full article in the Rocky Mountain News.

Witnesses who said they saw the incident Thursday wrote down a phone number on the van and took down its license-plate number, which helped detectives connect the vehicle to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, the Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site.

Police said the incident was a case of "homeless dumping" and were questioning officials from the hospital.

"I can't think of anything colder than that," said Detective Russ Long. "There was no mission around, no services. It's the worst area of Skid Row."

Read the full story at CNN.com.

The doctor was indicted by a federal grand jury, which alleged that he exaggerated his qualifications about his experience doing open-heart surgery while giving a deposition for the plaintiff in a Michigan malpractice case, in which the federal government was the defense.

Zakharia told The Miami Herald on Monday that the defense lawyers didn't understand him, he didn't exaggerate and the issue of his experience wasn't even material to the central subject in the case, which he said involved botching the presurgery tests of a patient."

The studies, published yesterday in the American Journal of Medical Quality, provide new evidence for experts who argue that hospitals could prevent many of the growing number of infections that afflict patients nationwide, cost billions of dollars to treat and are responsible for thousands of deaths each year."

The studies, published yesterday in the American Journal of Medical Quality, provide new evidence for experts who argue that hospitals could prevent many of the growing number of infections that afflict patients nationwide, cost billions of dollars to treat and are responsible for thousands of deaths each year.

'It's the process, not the patients,' said David B. Nash, the journal's editor and chairman of the Department of Health Policy at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. 'These three groups independently found that despite hospitals' claim that in the sickest patients it's inevitable that someone is going to get a hospital-acquired infection, that's just not the case.'"

Read the full article in the Washington Post.

Medical malpractice insurers made twice as much money as they spent in West Virginia last year. These insurers' profit margin is higher than the national average for medical malpractice insurers, the report said.

Doctors have benefited as well. West Virginia Mutual, the state's largest medical malpractice insurer, cut its rates by an average of 5 percent and plans another 15 percent cut in January, said Bill Kenny, deputy director of the Insurance Commission and the report's author."

Read the full article in the Charleston Daily Mail.

"I'm terribly, terribly sorry," Rosin said during his sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court on Wednesday. "I hope before they make a final decision about me they will be patient, they will be forgiving and they will not be overly strict or harsh as they form their opinion."

But Rosin's tearful apology didn't sway the victims who attended his final hearing or U.S. District Judge William Castagna, who sentenced the disgraced Sarasota dermatologist to 22 years in prison."

Read the full story in the St. Petersburg Times.

All this is because medical malpractice litigation is exploding. Egged on by greedy lawyers, plaintiffs sue at the drop of a hat. Juries award eye-popping sums to undeserving claimants, leaving doctors, hospitals, and their insurance companies no choice but to pay huge ransoms for release from the clutches of the so-called “civil justice” system. Medical malpractice litigation is a sick joke, a roulette game rigged so that plaintiffs and their lawyers’ numbers come up all too often, and doctors and the honest people who pay in the end always lose.

This is the medical malpractice myth.

Built on a foundation of urban legend mixed with the occasional true story, supported by selective references to academic studies, and repeated so often that even the mythmakers forget the exaggeration, half truth, and outright misinformation employed in the service of their greater good, the medical malpractice myth has filled doctors, patients, legislators, and voters with the kind of fear that short circuits critical thinking."

Recent experience—at first from just a handful of hospitals, but now from hundreds—shows that this pessimism is unfounded. Many kinds of errors can be completely eliminated; "zero defects" is possible. Some hospitals are, for example, achieving once impossible success at eliminating certain kinds of infections and medication errors. There is no reason these successes can't be widely replicated, maybe everywhere.

In 2000, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in cooperation with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), challenged hospitals to apply for grants to help them "pursue perfection" in their safety, reliability, patient focus, waiting times and efficiency. More than 200 hospitals applied; seven were chosen as grantees in what became the Pursuing Perfection Project. After five years, each was still far from "perfect," but their achievements clearly raised the bar for all U.S. hospitals."

Read the full story at MSNBC.com

The suit also alleges that officials in charge of the hospital at the time were aware of the problem but allowed the procedures to continue because they were profitable for the hospital.

The suit was filed in September 2005 by a former physician, Dr. Bruce Lowman, who was director of the hospital's vascular laboratory starting in 1997. The case remained secret for 10 months until a federal judge unsealed it in July.

The suit was filed under strict provisions applying to federal "whistleblower" cases, which are aimed at recovering money paid by the government as a result of fraudulent claims. Such cases automatically are sealed after being filed to give the government time to decide whether to join as a plaintiff. In this case, the government decided against joining, but the private attorneys handling it are pursuing it anyway."

Read the full article in the Hilton Head Island Packet.

The law took effect in July 2005 and limits damages commonly known as pain and suffering to $350,000 per defendant and a total of $1.05 million if more than one provider is involved. It does not affect economic losses.

Supporters of the caps say they are needed to reduce high jury awards and frivolous lawsuits, which they say led to soaring malpractice premiums that have been driving doctors out of the profession.

Opponents say the premiums were so high to offset insurers' investment losses, artificially low premiums offered to attract business in the 1990s, and other industry factors. They also say caps hurt those who've suffered legitimate injuries."

Read the full article in the The Greenville News.

The following is a press release from the Illinois Trail Lawyers Association:

"Judy L. Cates, President of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, released the following statement today on the one-year anniversary of the enactment of Illinois's medical malpractice law (PA 94-677).

"One year after the Illinois legislature passed a civil justice restriction that would limit the ability of victims to hold hospitals and health care workers accountable for negligence, the law has done nothing to decrease premiums for doctors and everything to increase the insurance industry's already bloated bottom line. 

"Limiting what an Illinois patient, injured through no fault of their own, can seek from a negligent health care worker or hospital is unfair - the arbitrary, one-size-fits-all approach ignores the degree of negligence or harm inflicted on the patient.  Politicians should not be making decisions as to what an injury is worth.

"The civil justice system is many times the last resort for victims of medical negligence - with hundreds of thousands of people dying each year from medical errors, eliminating the right of victims to hold negligent health care workers and hospitals accountable leaves them with no avenue to seek justice and get the care they need and deserve."

Below are the facts:

Most mistakes the researchers found were trivial, although three could — but did not — cause problems for the children, said the lead researcher, Dr. James A. Taylor, professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington Medical Center.

Taylor said he was amazed at how well the doctors who prescribed treatment and the parents who administered the drugs did in the study.

Taylor's study is in today's issue of Cancer, a journal by the American Cancer Society."

"On a day that several family representatives gained access to ongoing discussions that could chart the future of the state's birth-related injury compensation program, 20 families yesterday wrote Gov. Timothy M. Kaine that they have witnessed "underhanded tactics, outright dishonesty, and cruel insensitivity to our children from the program and its associates."

The tone of the letter is in sharp contrast to the impressions of some families reached by The Times-Dispatch last week who voiced support for program operations and are pleased with medical benefits that are projected to average about $2 million per child.

Kaine's office said the governor was reviewing the letter yesterday and had no immediate comment.

The letter to Kaine reflects growing tensions over the future of a program that at its outset 18 years ago was portrayed as an imaginative no-fault alternative to costly malpractice litigation; one objective was to preserve access to obstetrical health care, especially in rural areas."

A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine argues that more lawsuits will decease the amount of medical errors. In fact, the article states, the current environment where malpractice victims' rights are under attack will only lead to more needless errors down the road.
Echoing what malpractice attorneys have been saying all along, article calls for a shift of focus ti corporate and hospital responsibility rather than limiting victims' recovery.

An 11 year old boy died from complications during a routine surgery to drain an abscess in the boys ankle. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement reported the event, citing careless medical errors and sloppy adherence to safety protocols during the surgery.
This is another tragic example of a failed system of safety procedures in some hospitals.
Had this occurred in Illinois, the recovery of the 11 year old in a malpractice action would by severly limited. The General Assembly passed caps on jury awards in malpractice actions to $500,000 for non-economic damages. Considering the economic worth of an 11 year-old, his recovery would have not far exceed this amount. Another example of how caps only work to pushish those severly injured by medical carelessness.

A new tactic taken by doctors and their insurers is to stifle testimony given by doctors on bahalf of injured plaintiffs. Many states require a doctor signature affirming a meritorius claim before a lawsuit can be filed, while all medical malpractice actions require expert testimony from a doctor stating how the defendant doctor was negligent.
By suspending or censuring doctors who testify on behalf of the injured, doctors and their insurers have found a way to deter doctors from testifying, thereby preventing a malpractice suit.
Fortunately, at least in North Carolina, this tactic will not stand.

Read the full decision here.

A new book written by a Connecticut Mutual Professor of Law and director of the Insurance Center at the University of Connecticut details the evidence show that in fact "the real problem is too much medical malpractice, not too much litigation." In "The Medical Malpractice Myth" the author, Mr. Tom Baker, cites mostly medical journals to lay out the case against the myth that litigation is driving up the costs of healthcare. He concludes that the "tort reformers" have a detrimental impact on patient safety.

Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama joined forces to tackle the issue of Medical Liability Reform. Their answer? Putting patient safety at the forefront of the discussions. In an opinion piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Senators clarify the legal systems role in bringing about changes for patient safety. They quickly dispel the notion that capping jury awards does anything to achieve this end. "Capping malpractice payments may ameliorate rising premium rates, but it would do nothing to prevent unsafe practices or ensure the provision of fair compensation to patients." They go on to detail their legislation for medical liability reform.

The full article may be found here.

The horrific stories of patients going in for surgery on one part of their body, only to have another part operated on, is on the rise. A recent article in USA Today. The horrors include mistakingly removing wrong limbs or organs, slicing into the wrong side of the body, or performing surgery on the wrong patients. A study published in the Archives of Surgery found the events on the rise, and although rare, is unacceptable.
Another facet to the problem is the fact that some hospitals don't report any of these types of events. Some states require their hospitals to report any such event. Other states do not require public disclosure of the mistakes.

"A Crossville, Tenn., oncologist blamed her nurses, her busy schedule and complicated billing procedures as she was sentenced to 15½ years in prison yesterday after shortchanging her patients of chemotherapy drugs.

But the family members of cancer patients under her care, in asking the judge to give Dr. Young Moon a maximum sentence, said her greed was the reason she shorted their loved ones of life-saving medications.

"It's one thing to lose your mom, and to find out it's because of malicious behavior just adds to it," a choked-up Diana DeWitt, 47, a Nashville musician, told U.S. District Judge Todd Campbell yesterday."

Read the full article in the Tennesean here.

The annual report filed by Illinois' largest medical malpractice insurer, ISMIE, shows that claim payments fell, while profits and executive pay rose last year.
The filing indicates that claims fell by 5.3%, the second drop in as many years. At the same time, salaries for executives increased by as much as 33%, with the CEO's pay increasing 4.5% to $1 million a year.
Let us not forget that ISMIE's battle cry for capping victim's damages in medical malpractice lawsuits was skyrocketing rates due to greedy lawyers. Not only have these caps not lowered premiums, we continue to see rates increase, almost as much as ISMIE's executive board's salaries.
The hard truth is that ISMIE succeeded in 'reforming' malpractice lawsuits, and continue to raise doctors' insurance rates. How any doctor is not infuriated by these numbers is a mystery.

Read the full story in Crain's Chicago Business here.

In the wake of the medical malpractice bill passed by the General Assembly last summer, Illinois largest medical malpractice insurer, ISMIE, was recently ordered to reduce rates charged to Illinois doctors. The medical malpractice reform law capped awards on non-economic damages, but also implemented new insurance regulation. As a result of these new regulations, ISMIE was subject to hearings regarding their corporate governance and rate increases last fall.
As a result of those hearings, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation required ISMIE to implement and disclose the following:
-establish a dividend return program to return excess dividends or premiums to doctors
-cap the average premium rate increase for 2006-2007 and set a target rate of reduction of 3.5%
-give deep discounts to doctors who participate in education programs designed to improve quality of health care; and
-provide extensive date on how ISMIE establishes its rates and determines risks.
These new regulations constitute substantial reform in the malpractice insurance industry in Illinois. This type of regulation, and not limiting victims' rights by capping damages, will reduce the malpractice premiums charged to doctors.

Americans for Insurance Reform (AIF) recently released results of a study indicating that malpractice insurance rates have stopped rising. The study, performed by the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers, indicated that the average rate hike for doctors over the last 6 months was 0 percent.

The most important result of this study is that the static rates occurred in both states with and without damage caps. Just another piece of evidence supporting the fact that damage caps on medical malpractice lawsuits have no correlation with fluctuating insurance rates.

An error during a common surgery aimed to reduce ear infections resulted in the death of four-year-old Harry Donnelly. While doctors were implanting ear tubes and removing his adenoids, his breathing tube became dislodged. The oxygen monitor had slipped off Harry's pinky finger, and no warning sounds went off. As a result, Harry went without oxygen for 36 minutes and ultimately died.

The Institute of Medicine at the National Acedemy of Sciences estimates that 98,000 deaths occur each year because of medical erors and negligence in U.S. Hospitals. We can only wonder the results if the time and money spent on lobbying to limit victims of malpractice rights was spent on looking to reduce medical errors.

Read more here.

President Bush said in his State of the Union Address on January 31, 2006, that "[a]nd because lawsuits are driving many good doctors out of practice -- leaving women in nearly 1,500 American counties without a single OB/GYN -- I ask the Congress to pass medical liability reform this year."

The American Bar Association sent out a fact sheet the debunks the President's claim. According to data provided by the American Medical Association, the number of OB/GYN doctors has increased steadily over the last 30 years.
Furthermore, The General Accounting Office, the nonpartisen research wing of Congress, noted instances of ER and OB/GYN doctors leaving some rural areas. However, the GAO found these occurrances 'in scattered, often rural, areas where [doctors] identified other long-standing factors [other than malpractice suits] that affect[ed] the availability of services.'

The full fact sheet may be found here.

New evidence keeps emerging that the medical profession has sold its soul in exchange for what can only be described as bribes from the manufacturers of drugs and medical devices. It is long past time for leading medical institutions and professional societies to adopt stronger ground rules to control the noxious influence of industry money on what doctors prescribe for their patients.

Last week two new cases came to light that reveal the lengths to which companies will go to buy influence with doctors, pharmacists and other medical professionals. Reed Abelson reported in The Times on Jan. 24 about a whistle-blower's lawsuit alleging that Medtronic had paid tens of millions of dollars in recent years to surgeons in a position to use and recommend its medical devices. In one particularly egregious example, a prominent Wisconsin surgeon received $400,000 for just eight days of consulting.

Read the full NY Times editorial here.

Galvanized by soaring malpractice insurance costs, Illinois physicians led the charge for the landmark tort reform law the General Assembly passed last year.

But they followed a road map charted a decade earlier by an unlikely ally -- cigarette giant Philip Morris, according to a company memo entitled the "1995 Tort Reform Project."

In pushing for tighter product liability laws, the memo's author called for the broadcast of three messages to the public: "David v. Goliath. Lawsuit abuse witnesses/poster children. Making the trial bar radioactive."

This document can be found among the millions of other records that Philip Morris posted on a special Web site devoted to previously secret insider records.

The Web site was created as part of the $246 billion settlement that tobacco companies entered into with 46 states in November 1998.

The Philip Morris documents shed light on a "dirty little secret" of the tort reform movement in Illinois and other states, said Joanne Doroshow, executive director of the Center for Justice and Democracy in New York City.

"Because the tobacco industry has been one of the principal architects of it," Doroshow said.

Read the full article in the Belleville Democrat here.

A recent survey performed by Public Citizen reveals that the D.C. Medical Society has grossly understated the number of obstetricians practicing in the Washington D.C. area. The new survey was prompted the Society's cry for tort reform due to the exodus of doctors. Much like reformists across the country, the Society demanded legislation that punishes victims to curb doctors fleeing the state to get away from lawsuits.
The Survey shows that there are over 40 percent more obstetricians practicing in the D.C. area than the number released by the Society.

Read the full article, as well as the methodology for the survey, here.

As more information is made public during the hearings for ISMIE, the state's largest medical malpractice insurer, the lengths to which the insurer will go to mask the reasons for skyrocketing malpractice rates become clear. ISMIE is currently before the Illinois Department of Insurance in an effort to increase their rates, only allowable with the Department's permission under the new medical malpractice law.
Testimony and records show that while ISMIE was raising premium costs by 120 percent, forcing some doctors from practicing in rural areas, they continued to extend big perks to ISMIE executives including:
* Big pay raises, including one that boosted [CEO] Lerner's 2004 yearly salary to nearly $1 million, the firm's annual reports show.
* Low-interest mortgage loans, including a $995,000 loan on Lerner's
4,800-square-foot home in Glencoe, a wealthy Chicago suburb, Cook County property records show.
* Nearly $5 million in deferred compensation to Dr. Don Udstuen, a top
lobbyist who pleaded guilty to taking part in a kickback scheme connected in testimony to former Gov. George Ryan.

Not to mention the huge amounts spent on political campaigns, also revealed in ISMIE records. Consider the statement by St. Clair County Medical Society's President Dr. Stephen Burger: "I just don't think [ISMIE] did a very good [public relations] job campaign to notify the general public, specifically the doctors, on how the operation actually works."
No kidding--how about execs stuffing their pockets without disclosing their "operations" to not only the public, but doctors as well.
In what hopefully with be the final blow to ISMIE's request to increase rates yet again, records also show that ISMIE exaggerated medical malpractice claims by including any policyholder that merely testified at trial as a "claim." Can ISMIE explain how this is misleading? Of course not.

Read more here.

Yet another study proving that skyrocketing malpractice insurance rates have only a tenuous relationship with malpractice lawsuits. The study, performed by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, considered industry reported loses to actual payouts over a 8 year period from 1986 to 1994. The reported loses totalled nearly 40 billion, while the actual payouts were only 26.7 billion, a 31 percent difference. The insurance industry overstated their losses every year considered in the study.
Among other factors, insurers consider estimated losses when calculating premiums. The study shows that by overstating their losses, insurance companies can inflate their premiums well beyond what the market would otherwise support.

Read the full article here.

The Illinois General Assembly passed a law which will require all major medical errors, called "never events", to be publically reported. The law requires all Illinois hospitals and surgery centers to publically admit if they commit any of 24 types of "never events." Some of these events include: performing the wrong surgical procedure; leaving a foriegn object in someone's body; or discharging an infant to the wrong person.
Although they are called never events, they happen all too often. Minnesota, which implemented a similar law years ago, recorded 90 'events' at 30 hospitals, resulting in 20 deaths and four serious disabilities in a 15 month period.

Read the Sun-Times article here.

A review of cancer diagnoses from pathology tests at four hospitals found that up to 11.8% were in error, according to a study slated to appear in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal Cancer. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine said because of the variety of detection methods used, they couldn't pinpoint the cause of misdiagnoses. They recommended standardizing tests and error reports as initial steps toward improving safety.

Get the full article here.

A recent study performed by the Commonwealth Fund, a non-for profit organization focused on independant research for health care issues, indicated errors occuring in over 30% of patients treated. U.S. patients participating in the study also reported the highest rate of disorganized care.
Even more disturbing is the fact that U.S. healthcare costs are amongst the highest in the world. Many of the patients involved in the study indicated that they did not visit their doctors as often as they should, or take their medication, because of high costs.
As patients continue to have their rights stripped away by state governments, we have to ask ourselves...do we have a lawsuit crisis in this country or a crisis of quality medical care?

Read more here.

How many reasoned voices will it take before people realize that skyrocketing malpractice rates are unrelated to malpractice lawsuits? The latest voice is Ken Conner, Chairman of the Center for a Just Society. The Society has a broad conservative agenda but still recognizes the importance of the civil justice system. Mr. Conner also served as Florida Governor Jeb Bush's attorney in the Terri Schiavo case.
Clearly Mr. Conner would not side with the Plaintiff's Bar on many issues, but he agrees with one. Malpractice insurance prices have no relation to actual insurance payouts.
Consider one of the facts that persuaded Mr. Conner. Healthcare Indemnity, Inc., charged doctors an extra $173 million even though the company's payouts had decreased by more than $170 million during the same timeframe. Mr. Conner states: "Of course, you'd never know those facts listening to the spin coming out of the insurance industry. The industry's clear strategy is to blame injured patients and their attorneys in order to deflect attention from their averice."
It takes bravery for a man in Ken Conner's position to come forward with the truth regarding skyrocketing malpractice rates. We can only hope that this becomes a trend.

I encourage everyone to read his entire statement found here.

In July, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill which limits the rights of patients injured by negligent doctors. The bill also limits the liability of drug companies and medical device manufacturers for putting dangerous products into the marketplace, and restricts actions against nursing homes and HMO's.

Earlier this year, Gov. Blagojevich signed into law a medical malpractice bill that places caps on damage awards in malpractice actions. Signed under the guise of a lawsuit "crisis" in Illinois, the bill harms those injured who need compensation the most. Thankfully, the malpractice bill included controls on the insurance industry, and we shall see in the following years how these insurance companies have fabricated this "crisis" to fill their coffers.

Nonetheless, the federal bill passed in the U.S. House of Representatives places even further restrictions on the rights of the injured. And the bill does not stop with those injured by medical malpractice. The bill would also protect drug companies from full responsibility for putting dangerous drugs into the marketplace. For example, under the proposed bill, Merck's liability for covering up the cardiovascular risks associated with Vioxx while spending hundreds of millions of dollars on direct to consumer advertising would by severely limited.

Clearly this bill is a slap in the face to consumers, and we encourage you to contact our Senators Richard Durbin and Barack Obama to express your disapproval to this bill.

Dr. Barry Schifrin was a well respected parinatologist and member of the American College of Obstretics and Gynocology (ACOG), up until he testified on behalf of the plaintiff in a medical malpractice action against another member of the ACOG. After his testimony, the defendant ob/gyn filed a complaint and censure against Dr. Schifrin with the ACOG citing unethical behavior while testifying. The ACOG hit Dr. Schifrin with a censure in February of 2004, and he has since resigned from his practice.
The problem here is that doctors are turning on their own and seeking to censure those who give plaintiff's testimony in malpractice actions. They see plaintiff friendly doctors as perpetuating the medical liability crisis (which in itself is a myth).
"What they're trying to do is blacklist experts so people can't exercise their rights in the civil justice system," said plaintiffS lawyer Robert Boyers of Hannon & Boyers in Florida, where the problem is especially prevelant.

The mother of a 23-year-old brain-damaged patient found to be pregnant while living in a Bloomingdale healthcare facility has sued the company and the doctor who cared for the woman, alleging abuse and neglect. Cheryl Hale-Crom, filed a civil suit in Cook County on alleging her daughter was sexually assaulted and physically abused by "agents and employees" of the Alden Village Health Facility for Children and Young Adults between November and December 2004. Hale-Crom's daughter, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, is completely disabled and is fed through a tube. The woman was taken to a hospital June 11 after Alden workers and the woman's doctor, Roland Borrasi, noticed her stomach was swollen, according to the lawsuit. Alden workers allegedly believed she might have a feeding-tube problem, though one nurse reportedly said she might be pregnant. Tests revealed the woman was almost 29 weeks pregnant.

Read the full article in the Chicago Tribune here.

The Illinois Department of Public Health filed multiple reports citing significant health code violations putting patients "at risk for serious harm or death." The conditions are so bad that the state has twice declared the hospital being in "immediate jeopardy" which is the states' code for the most serious violations. The list of citations include:
*patients left unattended who died, including a 2-day-old baby;
*biohazardous waste containers left open and unsealed;
*an employee who supervisors knew tested positive for tuberculosis continued to work around patients for four months.
Keep in mind that at the same time this is going on, the Governor is poised to sign a medical malpractice bill that limits the amount of a victims recovery. If the proponents of this bill put as much effort in hospital safety as they did in lobbying for the malpractice bill, conditions like those at Provident may not happen.

Read the full article here.

On July 14, 2005, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin found caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice awards unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that the cap is "unreasonable and arbitrary" because there is no "rational" relationship between it and lower medical malpractice premiums. It also violates equal protection provisions in the Wisconsin Constitution, the court ruled. Wisconsin now joins a handful of states that have found damage caps unconstitutional.
Of course, the Illinois General Assembly recently passed a similar law for Illinoisians. The Illinois Supreme Court found similar damage caps unconstitutional in 1995. For our sake, we hope that the recent ruling is a foreshadowing of things to come in Illinois.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal explains how anesthesiologists have kept their malpractice rates low. Their radical theory? Less harm to patients would mean fewer lawsuits. As shown in the chart below, anesthesiologists malpractice rates have actually decreased over the last 20 years.

Instead of pushing for laws that would protect them from potential lawsuits, anesthesiologists have focused on improvement in patient safety. Advancements in procedures geared around patient safety and devices that alert doctors to potentially fatal problems in the operating room have improved the overall safety rate. Just 20 years ago, one in every 5,000 patients died as a result of anesthesia. Today, that number is one in every 200,000 to 300,000 patients.
These numbers are even more impressive when you consider that anesthesiologists were once considered one of the most high risk specialties to insure. Premiums for anesthesiologists 20 years ago...

According to the Institute of Medicine, preventable medical errors account for nearly 100,000 deaths every year. By contrast, motor vehicle accidents cause about 46,000 deaths yearly. At the same time, road blocks to improving the system are being put up by the medical industry and the federal government.
At the same time, Congress and the White House (not to mention the medical industry) are doing little to improve the situation. Consider this: if the FAA allowed 27 jets to crash every month for a year, the death toll would be about 98,000. Do you think the FDA would be left to plod along to remedy the situation on their own time? Of course not. There would be a public outcry and legislators would instantly respond.
But that is exactly is what the medical industry is doing: plodding along at their own pace, and the death toll continues to increase. Consider the effect if insurance, medical, HMO, nursing home, and drug industries decided to devote to patient safety the tens of millions of dollars they spend on lobbying each year to take away patient rights...

A study recently released by the Center for Studying Health System Change indicated that health care costs increased again in 2004. The increase itself is not as alarming as the fact that costs rose 2.9% quicker than the country's overall economic growth rate. As a result, more and more citizens will be unable to keep up with the increasing costs of health insurance, ultimately having to go without. The percentage of employer sponsored health insurance programs actually decreased in the same time period.

To no great suprise, 2004 also proved to be the most profitable year for insurance companies ever.

Read full news release here.

As Governor Blagojevich prepares to sign the recently passed medical malpractice reform bill, I thought it helpful to consider some national statistics on doctor and hospital error:

*3% or more of hospital patients are hurt by medical error.

*1 in 300 patients die from such mistakes. In U.S. aviation only 1 in 5 million flights ends in a deadly accident.

*24% of people say they or a family member have been harmed by a medical error.

*90,000 people die of hospital-acquired infections annually. More than half of these deaths may be preventable.

*180,000 elderly outpatients die or are seriously injured by drug toxicity. Half of these incidents may be preventable.

*7,000 patients die from drug errors each year.

*554 errors in four months were found at one six-bed intensive care unit; 147 were potentially serious or life-threatening.

*55% of recommended care actually gets administered.

*$2,000 Annual cost to employers per insured worker, due to poor-quality care.

Sources: Lucian Leape; New England Journal of Medicine; CDC; Forbes; Journal of the American Medical Association; Institute of Medicine; Quality and Safety in Health Care; RAND; Midwest Business Group on Health.

The real slap in the face to Illinois citizens is the fact that ISMIE Mutual (Illinois largest malpractice insurer) has not guaranteed lower doctors' malpractice insurance rates in light of the new reform laws.

We strongly encourage anyone opposed to the bill to write Gov. Blagojevich asking him to veto the bill.

Here are links to more studies which prove that those behind damage caps are lying to consumers and victims of medical negligence.

Dartmouth Study
Kaiser Family Foundation Study
Study of Washington D.C. malpractice awards

This week, the Illinois House and Senate approved a medical malpractice reform bill that includes caps on non-economic damages. The bill will now go to Governor Blagojevich, who is expected to sign the bill into law. This is a catastrophic blow to patients and patients' rights in Illinois. Not only are the caps alone proven to have no effect on malpractice insurance rates, but the caps only serve to limit the recovery of those most seriously injured by negligent doctors.
The bill limits recovery of non-economic damages to $500,000 per doctor and $1 million per hospital. At first glance, this may seem like a lot of money but consider the results on a homemaker who had an unnecessary double mastectomy (it is linked here because it really happened). What sort of recovery would she be entitled to under the new Illinois law? Very little. She is entitled to payment of medical bills, future medical bills, and loss of future earnings. The victim here is a homemaker, so now we are down to medical bills. An award of the limit for pain and suffering may, and I emphasize may, just cover the cost of the litigation and attorney's fees.
In the end, the victim has both of her perfectly healthy breasts removed as the result of a negligent doctor and she gets...her medical bills paid for. How's that for 'jackpot justice'.

Stroke is the No. 1 cause of disability and the No. 3 cause of death in the U.S. Of the 700,000 strokes annually, 164,000 of them result in death. One of the most critical factors between living or dying from a stroke is time. As each minute passes after suffering a stroke, the odds of survival diminish. Another important factor between life and death is being taken to a hospital set up to properly treat the stroke. A listing of Illinois hospitals with specialzed stroke units can be found here. A survey published in 2000 in the journal Stroke showed that 66% of hospitals in North Carolina did not have a protocol set up for treating stroke...

It is hard to go anywhere in the country right now and not hear about tort reform. Battle cries of "doctors are fleeing the state!" and "judicial hellholes" and "jackpot justice" are favorites for proponents of legal reform.
These cries stir passion, but are there any facts supporting these claims? The answer is simply no.
The Economic Policy Institute recently examined claims made by organizations supporting the idea that lawsuits are out of control. Below are EPI's results from their investigation into the claim made by Tillinghast-Towers Perrin, a company whose clients include most of the world's largest insurance companies, that the tort system cost $246 billion in 2003...

The following organizations have denounced medical malpractice reform, including any caps placed on the recovery of those injured by negligent doctors. Their recent letters to the Illinois General Assembly are linked below:

Illinois Chapter of the AFL-CIO
Illinois Chapter of the NAACP
Illinois Chapter of the Alliance for Retired Americans
Illinois Council of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) (See page 2 of attached file)
Illinois Chapter of Citizen Action (See page 2 of attached file)

A recent article in USA Today summarized a study released by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). According to JAMA, tens of thousands of deaths occur each year in the U.S. due to medical negligence, despite a push over the last five years for patient safety. The article cites the complexity of health care systems, resistance of doctors to admit fault, and health insurance companies that reward errors instead of focusing on preventative medicine.

Read the USA Today Article here.
Download the complete JAMA article here.

To err is human--a fact that is avoided or denied by some doctors and the medical profession generally. Well, we all know that accidents will happen and it is better to accept that fact and take steps to avoid future accidents. This is the 'so simple it might just work' idea summed up in a doctor's recent comments to the Washington Post. The doctor recognizes that the focus on tort reform and limiting patients rights to the courts is misguided. The efforts should be on error prevention and creating a standard of care for certain illnesses that can be used nationally.

The consumer group Public Citizen recently released its summary of national data on medical malpractice insurance and lawsuits. The study showed no evidence of a link in the recent meteoric rise of insurance premiums and malpractice lawsuits.

"The hard, factual evidence cannot be any clearer: We have no medical malpractice lawsuit crisis in America," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. "Insurance companies may be padding their bottom lines by jacking up rates on doctors, but it is not because of patients seeking relief for bad medical care through our courts. The true crisis continues to be in inadequate measures for patient safety and incompetent medical care by a small number of physicians."

The simple truth about rising medical malpractice rates in Illinois is finally coming to light. A recent article in the Chicago Tribune highlights one of the core problems with rising medical malpractice rates in Chicago: negligent doctors. It seems simple enough, but it is a cause of the problem that is rarely heard over tort reformist's battle cry of frivolous lawsuits...