The Washington Supreme Court has struck down the filing of a certificate of merit in medical malpractice cases in Washington state. The certificate is required by RCW 7.70.150. The opinion said that the statute was unconstitutional because it violated the separation of powers between the Legislature and the Judiciary and…
The Georgia Legislature imposed a cap on noneconomic damages in meritorious medical malpractice cases in 2005. The cap is $350,000. In a case tried in Fulton County several years ago, the jury’s verdict exceeded the cap, and the Georgia Supreme Court is now considering whether the cap is…
Max Kennerly has done it again. Read this post on the Litigation and Trial bog which looks behind the allegation that the American people support medical malpractice reform. Before you do, read the following: DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THIS STATEMENT: As part of any health care reform plan, Congress needs…
A reader sent me an article in September – October 2009 issue of Harvard Magazine that discusses the work of Dr. Atul Gawande. Dr. Gawande is very interested in patient safety. One of his interests is the use of medical checklists, a subject I have addressed in a previous post. Apparently, …
Some health care providers are starting to get it. When you mess up, fix it. Don’t hide. Don’t cover it up. Don’t blame the patient. Just do the responsible thing and fix it. Today’s Wall Street Journal writes about the relatively recent phenomena of hospitals that not only step in and…
An article in Archives of Internal Medicine (2009;169(12):1123-1129) reveals that about 1 in 14 abnormal outpatient test results are either not reported to the patient or the report to the patient is not documented. The article summarizes a study consisting "of a retrospective medical record review of 5434 randomly selected patients aged 50…
A Tennessee lawyer who purports to have knowledge and experience in Tennessee medical malpractice law recently wrote a blog post that advised the pubic about statutes of limitations in medical malpractice cases. His post was wrong, and it was obvious to me that he was unaware of the legislation passed in June…
The "Dead By Mistake" website, hosted by the San Francisco Chronicle, contains chilling stories of deficiencies in our health care system that result in injury and death. This alone brings the point home: more people die each month from preventable medical errors than died in the terrorist attacks of 9/11.…
Those of us who do medical malpractice work are familiar with Occam’s Razor, the common understanding of which (as stated on Wikipedia) is that "of several acceptable explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest is preferable, provided that it takes all circumstances into account." Those of us who do medical malpractice…
This is the fourth in a series of posts that addresses new laws of interest to Tennessee tort lawyers. For other changes go to the Legislation 2009 category of this blog. Those of us who keep an eye on the Tennessee General Assembly know that there is an ongoing battle…