Category: Medical Malpractice

When we visit a doctor or spend time in an emergency room, clinic, or hospital, we trust that we’ll be properly taken care of and that the staff members know what they’re doing. Despite this expectation, doctors and medical professionals make mistakes every day. One may argue that all humans make mistakes occasionally—and this is certainly true—but when we place our lives in the hands of another human being, the risk of a mistake happening has to be lowered to an absolute minimum.

A news team in Little Rock, Arkansas, reported that local nursing home residents were being encouraged to sign tort reform documents limiting damages and attorney fees they could receive should they ever become involved in a medical malpractice suit against the facility.  More than 20 different nursing home facilities investigated had staff members that had been soliciting signatures from residents with severe mental incapacities.  Family members are outraged and appalled at the underhanded action of an establishment they are expected to trust.

According to the Attorney General’s office, as long as a nursing home resident is deemed “competent” a facility is legally allowed to obtain their signature on documents without first consulting with family members or a power-of-attorney.  Competency is commonly thought of as a medical determination but it is not, rather it is a legal determination based on medical evidence.  Therefore, a resident can be suffering from severe dementia and still be competent because a court has not determined that they are incompetent.

Just a few days ago, we reported about a dangerous situation that has been slowly unfolding at University of Louisville Hospital since 2013. Severe nursing layoffs and other employee cuts caused the hospital to become understaffed to high levels which forced overnight E.R. patients, for example, to not be seen until 9 AM the following day. Entire sections of the hospital were even forced to be closed off due to the lack of nurses.

In a recent Courier Journal article, it was revealed that the state of Kentucky is currently investigating whether patient care is being compromised at University of Louisville Hospital due to hospital understaffing caused by severe staff cuts issued by KentuckyOne Health, the healthcare corporation that currently owns the hospital.

On March 17^th, congressional GOP leaders attempted to pass a medical malpractice reform bill which has been a top priority of the Federal Physicians Association for quite some time. If allowed to pass, the bill would have placed a severe nationwide cap on any claimable economic damages and attorney fees involved in medical malpractice cases. This cap would have two goals—to discourage malpractice lawsuits from being filed and to change the rules of evidence in civil cases in order to make it harder for medical malpractice plaintiffs to succeed in court.

Similar reforms have been enacted in a number of states already. Supporters claim that such reforms can lower the costs of healthcare while increasing physician supply, but there isn’t much in the way of actual academic evidence which supports that claim. The argument for enacting a similar reform on a nationwide level seems to focus on forcing physicians to not base a decision as to where they practice on any statewide reforms, but as Dean Clancy, U.S. Congress vet and advocate of the healthcare industry argues, the choice of where a physician wishes to practice shouldn’t be decided on by Congress. Physicians are free to practice wherever they wish. They shouldn’t be compared to imported cargo.