In late April, Carol Renna was awarded $400,000 by a jury in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. The lawsuit derived from multiple visits made by the plaintiff to different doctors. Ms. Renna wanted to have two large masses in her breasts examined. Medical malpractice lawyers believe that this is an extreme case of negligence because if the problem is not properly detected, breast cancer is often deadly.
Medical Malpractice Lawyers Argue the Necessity of a Follow-Up
Ms. Renna originally found two masses in her breast in April of 2004. She visited her primary care physician but was soon referred to Dr. Mark Schadt. In the month following Renna’s discovery, Schadt conducted a fine-needle aspiration biopsy in an effort to determine whether cysts in the breast were cancerous. The initial results came back negative. The fine-needle aspiration biopsy is acceptable for some women in particular cases, but more extensive examinations such as a core-needle biopsy or an open biopsy are often necessary.
The following March, Renna returned and was once again given a fine-needle aspiration. Unlike her previous test however, these results came back positive for cancer. In April of 2005, the plaintiff underwent an excisional biopsy, which entails removing cysts and other surrounding area. Following the more invasive biopsy, Renna learned that she had invasive carcinoma stage III. Following this traumatic and shocking discovery, Renna was forced to undergo a simple mastectomy on her left breast and a radical mastectomy performed on her right breast. Medical malpractice laywers point out that a competent doctor should have followed up the initial fine-needle aspiration biopsy with a more complete biopsy to test a large sample of tissue.
Medical Malpractice Lawyers in New Jersey and Philadelphia
If you have recently undergone a procedure and you are still in pain that you believe may be attributed to negligence, it is possible that you have questions that only medical malpractice lawyers can answer. Please contact the Mininno Law Office for a free case evaluation, or call for a free consultation at 856-833-0600 in New Jersey, or 215-567-2380 in Philadelphia.
The surgeon who performed the surgery, Dr. Shawn Goodman, said she “didn’t realize I had operated on the wrong eye until I was done operating on the eye”. The child’s mother reports that since the operation, there has been no improvement in the right eye and the left eye, which was unnecessarily operated on, now appears to be wandering also. The doctor did send out a nurse to inform the parents that they would be operating on both of the child’s eyes, but she provided no explanation and did not ask for the parent’s consent before she soon vanished. 
The Georgia House recently passed an interesting bill which would make it mandatory for physicians to reveal their malpractice insurancestatus; whether or not they are insured. House Bill 147 still needs to be approved by both the State Senate and Governor Nathan Deal.
This piece of legislation would allow patients to find out if their physician is insured in the tragic event of medical malpractice. Rep. Ben Watson stated, “this is part of how a patient can judge a physician.” In the event the bill is passed, anyone could go through a website run by the Georgia Composite Medical Board and request information. Patients take on an enormous risk when deciding to undergo a medical procedure. Medical malpractice attorneys believe that it is a fair result to allow patients to research a doctor and their insurance coverage before electing to trust them to perform the procedure correctly.
Throughout the past decade, Florida has been seeking solutions to keep quality doctors within the state. The lack of major liability in medical malpractice lawsuits will be a major motivating factor for physicians when they ultimately select a location to practice. If doctors can decrease their financial outlay on insurance and other means to protect themselves against lawsuits, they will see a significant increase in their profit margin. The state had worried that they lagged behind much of the nation in recruiting and maintaining specialty doctors in fields such as orthopedics and neurology. 
At the summit, doctors maintained that tort reform is necessary because the threat of medical malpractice lawsuits forces them to practice “defensive medicine,” a system of ordering too many unnecessary tests in order to avoid being sued. Attorneys and patient advocacy groups maintained that the real reform needed is of the healthcare system, patient safety, and patient support. Patient advocates also push for reform of insurance companies and the amount of money they are allowed to charge. 
Among a myriad of errors that hospital employees can make on the job, the following seem to be the ones that occur most often: