Many New York doctors and other medical professionals go into the field of medicine in order to help people who are sick or injured. They often do everything they can to ensure that procedures are performed the way they are supposed to be. Unfortunately, some patients...
We have been talking about the tragic death of Thomas Eric Duncan, who died from Ebola in early October. The well-publicized details of his care included an emergency room misdiagnosis. Could the emergency room team be held liable for that mistake?In any discussion of...
The tragedy of Thomas Eric Duncan's death has sparked debates about emergency room mistakes and tort reform all over the country. Tort reform is the term used to describe legislative and regulatory initiatives designed to curb the costs of medical malpractice and...
People turn to hospitals in New York when they need medical care that, in some cases, is required to save their lives. Even in minor cases, they expect the hospitals to be safe and to be run at a high level but is this really what they are going to find? When looking...
With apologies to F. Scott Fitzgerald, medical malpractice is different from most civil litigation. These cases are always about some form of human suffering, but they are also about a broken bond between physician and patient. That relationship is built on trust, and...
The American Heart Association reminds us regularly that the leading cause of death in this country is heart disease. The American Cancer Society reminds us regularly that cancer is the second most prevalent cause of death. Is there an organization out there that even...
A friend of ours often tells us that technology is not always our friend. In medicine, technology -- pardon the pun -- cuts both ways. While diagnostics have greatly improved patient care and outcomes, the new tools may also give us information much sooner than we...
A diagnosis of cancer is never easy. It is a scary word for a patient to hear, and it is a complicated diagnosis for a doctor to explain. Cancers differ depending on a number of factors, including how early the cancer is detected and where the cancer is. Over the...
We are continuing our discussion from our last post. The subject, brain death, came up a couple of weeks ago when two very sad cases made national headlines. No one involved in those cases is from New York, but people here have certainly struggled to understand what...
We are picking up our discussion of brain death. The subject has made headlines in the past few weeks as two very different cases played out in national media. Neither case involves patients or providers from New York. We discussed them in our Jan. 21 post, but it...