New Jersey Medical Malpractice Lawyers – NJ Personal Injury Attorneys

A prominent elder advocacy group has come forward this week asking that specific data regarding preventable hospital errors be made available to the public.

According to the AARP, New Jersey residents have been kept in the dark as to the quality of their local healthcare providers. Current patient safety regulations (namely the Patient Safety Act), only requires the state to report errors as a whole, rather than specifically name the individual hospital offenders.

However, the AARP of New Jersey has called upon the department of Health and Senior Services to break this information down by hospital so patients can assess for themselves the quality of their local health care facilities.

Not surprisingly, the New Jersey Hospital Association opposes the release of such information.

Fortunately, the battle for specific disclosure has now made it’s way to the New Jersey state legislature.  Last session, a bill requiring the disclosure hospital-specific errors passed the Assembly but expired without gaining approval from the Senate.  Identical bills have been re-introduced to both chambers.

Why hospital-specific reporting matters in New Jersey

According to a recent HealthGrades study, New Jersey ranks 51st (fifty states and the District of Columbia) or dead last in patient safety incidents.  This same study also reveals that in 2004 alone, 195,000 patients in the US died as a result of a preventable medical error.

Clearly, these statistic show that the current reporting methods under the Patient Safety Act are not effective in deterring medical mistakes—especially in New Jersey.

However, hospital-specific reporting for medical mistakes will improve the overall quality of healthcare in New Jersey.  For example, residents of Camden County have over 5 hospitals to choose from for their care.  If one hospital is ranked far worse than the others, informed patients will choose to avoid the facility altogether.

Thus, hospitals that do not value patient safety will experience a major decline in revenue until they literally are forced to clean up their act.

While it is sad that better care comes down to a money game, a mass exodus of patients (or potential revenue) is the only way to get the attention of a hospital CEO with an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality.

How to Get Involved

Speak up!  Write or call your local congressman or congresswoman and let them know that you support hospital-specific reporting of medical mistakes (Bill A1264 or S807).

The local paper is another great way to spread the word on this issue.  Send letters to the editor, submit posts to the online forums/ blogs and leave comments on any relevant stories to express your support.

We, the public, deserve to know the quality of our local hospitals and healthcare facilities – and hospital-specific reporting of medical errors is the only way to achieve that goal.

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New Jersey medical malpractice attorney

According to the State Board of Medical Examiners, New Jersey surgeon Santusht Perera, removed his patient’s wrong lung and lied to cover up the mistake.

The real kicker to this story is that Dr. Perera only received a six (6) month suspension and $81,000 fine for what the board determined was “gross negligence” on the part of the surgeon.

The surgery in question was originally meant to remove a tumor in the patient’s left lung.  However, a portion of the right lung was removed by mistake, thus leaving the tumor to remain in the body.  The surgeon then lied to the patient and told him that it was really his right lung that contained a life-threatening tumor and changed the charts to also reflect this information.

Further investigation into the matter revealed that no such tumor existed in the right lung.  The doctor simply did not check the chart or pay attention to the details of the planned surgery.

Sadly, Dr. Perera can file an appeal for early restoration of his medical license in December of 2008.

 

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Mininno Law Office sent the following letter to the Star Ledger in New Jersey in response to a recent Op/Ed piece in support of tort reform:

Dear Editor:

This week, the Star-Ledger ran an Op/Ed piece from a tort-reform group called the Pacific Research Institute, which openly blamed malpractice suits for the ailing economy.  This group, (which is funded by tobacco companies, insurance lobbyists and corporate healthcare giants), claim that the millions of dollars spent each year on “defensive medicine” and “frivolous” malpractice lawsuits are draining the local economy and forcing doctors out of the state.  And while the theory sounds nice, is there any truth to the tort-reform argument?

The short answer is no.  It just seems that way because of the huge financial backing of the medical and insurance industry allows them to penetrate the media with unscientific research and biased opinions in support of tort reform.  For example, this same group (PRI) successfully argued just two years ago that global warming was “make believe” and did not exist.  As a result, the country waited several years to address this time sensitive issue that continues to affect our planet.

So what is the truth on medical malpractice and tort-reform?  The truth is that a medical malpractice crisis does exist in this country—but it has nothing to do with the lawsuits that follow the negligent conduct of doctors.  A quick look at the statistics (and true scientific research) shows that actual incidents of medical malpractice occur each year at an alarming rate.  The Institute of Medicine reports that 98,000 people die each year from preventable medical errors.  According to the FDA, medical errors are the eighth leading cause of death in the United States, ranking higher than automobile accidents, breast cancer and AIDS.  Clearly, this is more than a few rare, unintentional mistakes or the result of  “frivolous” malpractice suits.

Furthermore, the medical malpractice crisis has become so bad that Medicare, Medicaid and other large insurance companies will deny payment as of October 1, 2008 for “never events,” or medical mistakes that should never occur in a hospital setting.  The following list contains some of these “never events,” as well as statistics to show just how prevalent these “never events” really are:

• Medication Errors- 1.5 million people each year are killed, sickened or injured from medication errors according to the Institute of Medicine.
• Foreign Objects Left In the Body- Occurs in 1500 patients each year according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
• Wrong Site Surgery (surgery on the wrong body part or person)- Occurs in one (1) out of 112,994 operations according to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO)
• Patient Death or Disability from Contaminated Drugs or Devices- Just this year alone, contaminated heparin has been linked to 81 hospital deaths and over 700 injuries nationwide
• Stage 3 or Stage 4 bedsores– 2982 patients develop these pressure sores per day according to the National Decubitus Foundations.

Most people would agree that patients injured as a result of a serious medical mistake have every legal right to file a malpractice suit.  Survivors of medical malpractice lose their jobs, the ability to provide for their family and the ability to live a normal life.  Furthermore, in the state of New Jersey, “frivolous” lawsuits are almost non-existent.  Before a lawyer can file suit on behalf of an injured client, a licensed medical doctor must certify that the defendant physician chose not to follow basic rules of medicine, which led to a patient’s injury or death.

So if insurance lobbyists, corporate healthcare giants and negligent doctors are that concerned about the impact medical malpractice lawsuits are having on the economy, I suggest that they invest some of the millions of dollars they currently pay lobbyists and PR people to make the medical community a safer place.  Maybe billion dollar hospitals can implement policies that allow doctors to get more sleep or a take a break between grueling operations.  Or they can invest in bar code system in which medications are scanned and recorded to prevent errors.  Or just maybe tort reform supporters could make a donation in the name of proper staffing and personnel in hospitals to ensure that immobile patients are repositioned every two hours to prevent bedsores.

Obviously, if insurance lobbyists, corporate healthcare giants and negligent doctors spent the same time, finances and energy addressing the real root of the malpractice crisis, medical malpractice suits would naturally decline.  After all, malpractice caps will not stop the lawsuits—it will just limit the amount a negligent doctor’s insurance company will pay to a patient’s family.   Patient safety, however, will stop the lawsuits, save hospitals and doctors money in the long run and prevent innocent people from falling victim to careless or preventable medical mistakes.