Recent Decision Tolls Statute for Fraudulent Conduct

Recent Decision Tolls Statute for Fraudulent Conduct

Healthcare Finance News Shows Medical Malpractice Payments Continue to Fall

Analysis: Medical malpractice payments continue to fall

March 10, 2010 | Chelsey Ledue, Associate Editor, Healthcare Finance News

http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/analysis-medical-malpractice-payments-continue-fall

WASHINGTON – Fewer medical malpractice payments were made on behalf of doctors in 2009 than any year on record, according to the National Practitioner Data Bank.

This finding contradicts claims that medical malpractice litigation is to blame for rising healthcare costs and that changing the liability system to the detriment of patients will not curb costs.

The value of malpractice payments was also the lowest since 1999. Adjusted for inflation, payments were at their lowest since 1992, a Public Citizen analysis of the NPDB shows.

According to the analysis, healthcare spending rose 83 percent from 2000-09, while medical malpractice payments fell 8 percent (both figures are in unadjusted dollars.)

A total of 10,772 payments were made on behalf of doctors in 2009, totaling $3.49 billion. That figure equals 0.14 of 1 percent of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ estimated $2.5 trillion in overall U.S. healthcare spending for 2009.

Last year was the fifth consecutive year that the number of payments has fallen and the sixth straight year in which the value of payments has fallen, according to the analysis. In contrast, U.S. healthcare costs have increased every year since 1965, the first year the data was recorded.

Studies have found that injuries and deaths caused by medical errors dwarf the number of actual medical malpractice payments. For example, the Institute of Medicine found in 1999 that 44,000 to 98,000 people die every year due to avoidable errors.

Proposals to set up alternative “health courts” that theoretically would compensate a greater percentage of patients in a less adversarial setting are misguided, according to Public Citizen, which said such a system would cost several times as much as the status quo if administered fairly. The only way to save money would be to impose draconian limits on compensation, according to Public Citizen.

“Litigation accounts for a miniscule fraction of health costs, small enough to be a rounding error,” said David Arkush, director of the Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “It is ridiculous that certain members of Congress continue to obsess about this greatly exaggerated problem. They should know better, and they should focus instead on fixing real problems like the crisis of preventable medical errors.”

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Prescription mistakes can be dangerous

Each year, more than 1.5 million Americans are injured, made sicker or killed by medication mistakes.  These mistakes include dispensing the wrong prescription, giving the wrong dosage, or providing the wrong instructions.  It is estimated that about three percent of prescriptions filled at pharmacies contain prescription mistakes that may cause harm.

  
Gwen Daley, a school bus driver from Logansville, Georgia was a victim of medication error.  Her prescription antibiotic pills were not marked as unsafe for driving.  Yet, while driving on her school bus route, she was overcome with dizziness and pulled over to radio for help.  She continued to take the pills, and her symptoms got worse.  She was even hospitalized for her nausea, dizziness, headaches and blurred vision, but doctors could not figure out what was wrong.

   
Eventually she noticed that not all the pills in the bottle looked the same.  The bottle had been filled with the prescribed antibiotic Flagyl, but also with a strong antidepressant, Trazadone.  The pills look similar, but Trazadone has intense side effects.

   
Daley is outraged about the mistake.  As a school bus driver she is responsible for safely transporting a bus full of children.  She wonders what would have happened if she’d passed out while driving.  In her case, not only was her life endangered by the mistake, but the lives of her passengers as well.

   
Click here to learn more about pharmacy mistakes, how to prevent them and what you can do if you are the victim of a medication error.

Calls For Tort Reform a Deform - From the Marietta Daily Journal 8-13-09

Article by Lance Cooper, guest columnist

Whenever health care reform is proposed, some people instinctively think more so-called "tort reform" should be the solution to the debate (see Monday's Marietta Daily Journal op-ed page). This effort diverts us from the real issue at hand - affordable, attainable and safe health care.

Insurance companies and others who are fearful of accountability for medical negligence regularly employ the "deny and distract" routine. First, when faced with hard numbers and legitimate research placing blame not on lawyers, but on their own industries, they deny any accountability. Then they employ methods of distraction to tear us off the course to finding real solutions. Tort reform is such a distraction.

Supporters of tort reform argue that the threat of lawsuits makes doctors order unnecessary tests to protect themselves - a phenomenon they call "defensive medicine" - and yet there is no evidence to support those claims. Studies conducted by the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office have all cast doubts that such a thing called "defensive medicine" even exists.

Take McAllen, Texas, home of the most expensive health care in the country. Despite having draconian tort reform laws and the same caps on damages that we have in Georgia, the doctors routinely order excessive testing and procedures. They do so not for fear of lawsuits but because the fee-for-service structure actually encourages them to. In other words, the more tests they perform, the more they get paid.

Claims of "frivolous lawsuits" driving up health care costs are another regularly deployed method of distraction. Georgia, and the rest of the nation, already has laws against filing these so-called frivolous lawsuits. The New England Journal of Medicine published a study finding that 97 percent of medical malpractice claims are meritorious and that 80 percent of those involved serious injuries resulting in major disability or death. And the overall number of medical malpractice cases is low; less than 1 percent of all civil cases are medical malpractice cases.

Another frequently echoed distraction is the notion that doctors are fleeing and causing physician shortages because of liability concerns and increased malpractice insurance premiums caused by lawsuits. Once again, this distraction is false. Data from the American Medical Association show that physician numbers have been increasing across the board for many years. And the number of physicians is significantly higher in states without caps on damages. The National Bureau of Economic Research found that tort reform laws do not avert physician shortages, nor do they lead to greater, more efficient patient care.

Patient care is what really matters at this point. Preventable medical errors and mistakes are the leading cause of accidental death in the nation. Just 6 percent of doctors are responsible for nearly 60 percent of negligent care - and the civil justice system is the only effective means of holding them accountable.

In Texas, after the $250,000 cap on damages was imposed, thereby freeing negligent doctors from accountability, the number of complaints against Texas doctors to the Medical Board rose from 2,942 to 6,000 in just one year. Proposed tort reform measures do nothing but fill the coffers of malpractice insurance companies - the same companies who have raised premiums on the doctors while civil claims have remained stable and, in most states gone down.

Further dismantling our uniquely American system of accountability by enacting more tort reform would be disastrous. We can't forget what just happened with Wall Street vs. Main Street or the crash of AIG. The insurance industry and its special interest groups are utilizing a tired relic of gotcha-politics - blame the lawyers and hope Americans forget about the record bonuses being paid to insurance industry executives after the taxpayers bailed them out. Amazingly, insurance special interest groups, with their call for more tort reform, want to deprive Americans - who just bailed them out - of their constitutionally protected access to our judicial system. Let's ignore those distractions.

Taking away patients' constitutional right to seek justice in a fair court of law, when they have been injured through no fault of their own, does nothing to improve our health care system, nor does it increase patient safety. And it is, simply, un-American.

Lance Cooper of Powder Springs is past president of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association and is a past president of the Cobb Trial Lawyers Association. He holds a degree in economics from Cal-Berkeley and a law degree from Emory University.

Medical Mistakes Unfortunate Reality

Alison Young recently reported in the AJC on some alarming medical mistakes in Atlanta area hospitals.  She mentions a surgical team at Northside Hospital removing two breasts on a patient instead of the one she consented to, a surgeon drilling into the wrong side of a patient's head at Altanta Medical Center, and doctors performing circumcisions on the wrong babies at Wellstar Kennestone Hospital and Cartersville Medical Center.  She offers a few tips to protect yourself such as talking to your doctors to be sure you agree, in advance, what procedures will be performed, reading consent forms and other paperwork carefully, having a designated advocate to help you ask and answer any questions, insisting your doctor marks body parts before surgery, and encouraging the seemingly endless barrage of questions from nurses, doctors, and other staff. 

Unfortunately, these steps cannot prevent all instances of medical error.  And, as many victims of such medical negligence find out, there is often no  practical  recourse available.  Most instances of medical negligence and error result in damages too  small to  justify the costs of litigation. Although assuredly , any incidence of medical malpractice that causes physical injury is  all too  real for those  that experience it.  In Georgia, you must be able to prove damage to  file a medical malpractice suit.  The process is lengthy and expensive and unfortunately smaller damages often make   cases economically unfeasible for both the attorney and the victim.  The best protection the  medical industry has  to prevent frivilous litigation and insubstantial claims is the  victim's  lawyer's contingency fee  contract.  This fee agreement allows attorneys and victims to pursue cases they might otherwise be unable to pursue .  Few people can afford to pay a lawyer hundreds of dollars per hour for hundreds of hours and for all of the hyper expensive litigation costs.   A  competent lawyer cannot take every meritorious case  unless it will likely result in a  substantial financial recovery.  Medical negligence victims find out too late that the system is simply not designed to  catch, correct and compensate for the routine errors that occur every day in Georgia hospitals.

Hydroxycut Dietary Supplement Being Recalled After Link to Liver Damage

The dietary supplement Hydroxycut has been associated with several very serious liver injuries.  The FDA has received reports of 23 health problems related to the liver from users of Hydroxycut.  The product is now being recalled by its maker, Lovate Health Sciences Inc.

The reported health prolems include jaundice and elevated liver enzymes.  Such symptoms often indicate injury to one's liver.  One death has been reported to date.  Other symptoms being reported include nausea, vomiting, light-colored stools, excessive fatigue, weakness, stomach or abdominal pain, itching, and loss of appetite, seizures; cardiovascular disorders; rhabdomyolysis, a type of muscle damage that can lead to other serious health problems such as kidney failure.

The FDA is urging consumers to stop using Hydroxycut products immediately, and to consult with their doctor if they are experiencing any symptoms of illnes.

The following prodcuts are being recalled:

Hydroxycut Regular Rapid Release Caplets
Hydroxycut Caffeine-Free Rapid Release Caplets
Hydroxycut Hardcore Liquid Caplets
Hydroxycut Max Liquid Caplets
Hydroxycut Regular Drink Packets
Hydroxycut Caffeine-Free Drink Packets
Hydroxycut Hardcore Drink Packets (Ignition Stix)
Hydroxycut Max Drink Packets
Hydroxycut Liquid Shots
Hydroxycut Hardcore RTDs (Ready-to-Drink)
Hydroxycut Max Aqua Shed
Hydroxycut 24
Hydroxycut Carb Control
Hydroxycut Natural

If you have taken any of these products, stop immediately and consult a doctor if you are experiencing symptoms of illness.  At Kaufman Law, we help consumers who are victims of injury from defective drugs.  If you have taken one of the above products and are showing symptoms of illness, please call our office.

Are mentally ill patients a danger in your nursing home?

It is a dilemma that faces thousands of families across the country: what to do with their mentally ill family member who is unable to care for him or herself?  Over the last few years it seems that the answer has been to put the person into a nursing home and hope for the best.

Unfortunately, according to a troubling report from the Associated Press, the rising number of mentally ill patients in nursing homes across the country is resulting in terrible crimes against older and often frail residents.  The AP documented several cases of murder or rape against elderly residents, perpetrated by patients suffering from mental illness.

Federal law prohibits nursing homes from admitting mentally ill patients unless the State determines that the patient requires the high level of care that a nursing home can provide.  Despite this law, more and more states are screening patients suffering from mental illness and agreeing to place them in nursing homes.

But why are the numbers rising so drastically now?  It seems that more and more state mental institutions have had to close their doors, and that coupled with a shortage of space in psychiatric hospitals has left seriously mentally ill patients with nowhere to go.

Putting elderly nursing home residents together with patients suffering from mental illness is also an economic solution that many states find attractive.  If the percentage of mentally ill residents in a nursing home stays under fifty percent, the federal government will pay for residents care under Medicaid.  If the number of mentally ill residents rises above fifty percent, the nursing home would be classified as a mental institution and would not receive Medicaid.

Unfortunately, once a mentally ill patient is admitted to a nursing home, it can be difficult to get them out if trouble ensues.  All of this is a recipe for disaster for frail and elderly nursing home residents looking for a quiet place to live out their final years.