The new form states you may not write anything negative or post anything negative on the internet about the doctor.  You also agree to stop any of your friends and family from doing the same. Am I crazy or is this unbelievable. I would sign this form, I’d find a new doctor instead.

This is justice another attempt by insurance industry backed companies to take away patient rights and avoid fixing the medical malpractice problem in this country. If doctors would just police themselves by kicking out the doctors who repeatedly cause a majority of the medical errors that hurt people, then maybe patients wouldn’t have anything negative to talk about.  Thus reducing the number of medical malpractice lawsuits.

Approximately 100,000 deaths occur each year as a result of medical errors by doctors. There is a medical malpractice crisis and  patients last line of defense is his right to warn others about a doctor who has injured them negligently. Perhaps taking measures to increase patient safety would be a better use of a doctor’s time than continuing efforts to take away patient rights.

My 2 cents,

Max Meyers, Esq.

Source:

InjuryBoard.com, National New Desk by Jane Akre

A recent study has shown that doctors who followed a 19-item checklist of steps before surgery cut the death rate from surgery by almost 50%. Wow! Why hasn’t this been done before? Dr. Atul Gawande a Harvard surgeon published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine showing the decreased death rate and that complications from surgery are also reduced by 1/3 when the 19-item checklist was used.

U.S. hospitals are required to take some precautions, but not the 19-item checklist used in the study which is far more detailed than most hospitals currently use.  Hopefully, all hospitals will adopt this concept soon, it seems like a no brainer to me.

If you’re having surgery in the near future ask your surgeon if the 19-item checklist recommended by the World Health Organization will be used. If not, ask why not and if it can be used. It will significantly reduced your risk or complications or death during and following your surgery.

After all approximately 100,000 people die each year from preventable medical errors. It just makes sense to do all you can to make sure you don’t end up as one of those statistics.

Max Meyers, Esq.

Your unborn baby has been suffocating for 20 minutes before the nurses call the doctor back to the hospital. Tragically the doctor is not told how urgent the situation is and that he needs to drop everything and get back immediately. Instead it takes the doctor 13 more minutes to travel the 2 miles from his home back to the hospital. When the doctor arrives he’s surprised you’re not already in the operating room for an emergency c-section, but there’s no time now. The doctor performs the surgery right there in your room, delivering your limp baby girl with no heartbeat. Your baby is revived but not before suffering profound brain damage and being left with severe cerebral palsy. Tragic and preventable medical malpractice has altered your baby’s life forever!

This is what Sharla Tavares had to go through when she delivered her daughter Miriam in May 2003. A King County Jury awarded $4.2 Million yesterday to Miriam as a result of her injuries suffered at birth due to the negligence of Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland, Washington.

Unfortunately money cannot make up for all that Miriam has suffered. She cannot walk, talk or eat through her mouth. Her hands and feet are disfigured, her vision is impaired, and she is only expected to live at the longest into her 40s. No money can heal her injuries, but the money can provide for the medical care she’ll need for the rest of her life.

The Hospital of course denies all liability and claims Miriam was injured before her mother showed up at Evergreen Hospital. The hospital plans to appeal the jury’s verdict.

As a Washington Injury Attorney who handles medical malpractices cases, I’m always shocked that these kinds of preventable medical errors happen all too frequently. An estimated 98,000 deaths occur each year as a result of preventable medical errors, and thousands more like Miriam are injured each year. It’s cases like Miriam’s that motivate me and keep me fighting against the insurance companies and large corporations that refuse to take responsibility for their medical malpractice when it injures people like Miriam.

It’s good to hear that eventhough Medical Malpractice cases are some of the hardest to win, 60-70% of the time the injury victim loses, that King County juries do find in favor of the injury victim when the facts justify the outcome.

If you or someone you know has experienced a significant injury due to a medical error or medical amlpractice please contact me as soon as possible to discuss your rights.

Max Meyers, Esq.

Source:  Seattle PI, 10/10/08

If you are the injured victim or family member that recovers money as the result of a personal injury lawsuit or claim – then the money received is not taxed. Under Federal Treasury Regulation § 104(a)(2) Gross Income (potentially taxable income) does not include money (unless punitive damages – which aren’t available under Washington laws) received as the result of personal injury lawsuit /claim settlement, judgment, or verdict.

If you settled your car accident or other Washington injury accident case in the last tax year you will not have to pay taxes on it. You will probably have to report that you received a personal injury settlement or verdict, but no taxes will be charged against it. So when your accountant or tax software asks you about the amount received don’t worry, you won’t pay more taxes by telling the IRS about your injury settlement/verdict money. 

The tax code section reads specifically: “Section 104(a)(2) excludes from gross income the amount of any damages received (whether by suit or agreement) on account of personal injuries or sickness. The term “damages received (whether by suit or agreement)” means an amount received (other than workmen’s compensation) through prosecution of a legal suit or action based upon tort or tort type rights, or through a settlement agreement entered into in lieu of such prosecution.”

Ben Sansone of the Missouri Injury Law Blog had recent post on the same subject. If you live in Missouri you should definitely check out his blog, it is excellent.

The study showed that patients treated at top-performing hospitals were, on average, 43 percent less likely to experience one or more medical errors than patients at the poorest-performing hospitals. This really emphasizes the importance of checking out the hospital and doctor before you have any major surgery performed.

Among the other findings:

 • Patients had a 20 percent chance of dying as a result of suffering a medical error.
 • The overall death rate among patients who experienced medical error(s) fell by almost 5 percent between 2004 and 2006.
 • However, over that time, there were increases in post-operative respiratory failure, post-operative pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis, post-operative sepsis (blood infection), and post-operative abdominal wound separation/splitting.
 • The most common types of medical errors were bed sores, failure to rescue, and post-operative respiratory failure – which together accounted for 63.4% of the medical errors.
 • Failure to rescue improved 11.1 percent from 2004 to 2006, while both bed sores and post-operative respiratory failure worsened during that time.
 • If all hospitals performed at the level of the top-ranked hospitals, about 37,214 patient deaths could have been avoided.

Starting Oct. 1, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will stop reimbursing hospitals for the treatment of eight major preventable errors, including objects left in the body after surgery and certain kinds of post-surgical infections.

As a Kirkland Washington Medical Malpractice attorney I have seen the devastation medical malpractice can cause in clients’ lives. I am truly hopeful that when the government and insurance companies stop paying for medical errors we will see dramatic improvement in patient safety in our hospitals and less medical malpractice by our doctors.

Source: HealthDay News post on msn.com

Doctors, hospitals, and nursing homes without a dispute pending (but with patients who are injured or ill and in need of medical treatment) are crafting ways to avoid responsibility for medical errors ahead of time when you will usually go along – only later to find out you gave up some of your constitutional rights. Some of these arbitration agreements can also limit damages or make you pay the cost of arbitrators.

There can be several problems for patients if they sign an arbitration agreement including:

 ○ Patients often are unaware of all rights being given up – arbitration agreement can hidden within all the paperwork you have to complete when you first show up for your appointment;
 ○ Loss of right to a jury trial (juries are generally more favorable to patients than judges or arbitrators);
 ○ Increased costs if forced to pay arbitrators hourly fees – you don’t pay juries or judges hourly fees;
 ○ Patients will not be as familiar with which arbitrators are good or not – but doctors/hospitals and their insurance companies most definitely will know the arbitrators;
 ○ Confidentiality will often be required – so people will not be warned or learn from past mistakes;
 ○ No body of law will be formed establishing rules and guidelines for futures cases to follow.

If you are asked to sign an arbitration agreement by your doctor, hospital or other medical care provider just say NO!

You are not required sign an arbitration agreement and they should not refuse to treat you based on your refusal. If they do refuse to treat you – and it’s not a life threatening injury at that very moment – find another doctor or hospital who will treat you without requiring you to give up your constitutional rights.

Source: Law.com – Patient Arbitration Pacts Are Alarming Attorneys

Beginning in October 2008 Medicare will no longer pay for eight hospital mistakes – including:

• Urinary infection from catheter
• Bed sores
• Surgical object left in body
• Air embolism
• Giving wrong type of blood
• Blood infection from catheter
• Chest infection after bypass surgery
• Hospital – caused injury

Medicare believes that if they stop paying for mistakes then hospitals will stop making them. Sure makes good sense to me.

The State of Pennsylvania’s Medicare system is already refusing to pay for 27 “never events” including surgery on the wrong body part and medication leading to injury or death. Hospitals and doctors should pay for fixing their mistakes not the patients. In the past 2 years as a result not paying for mistakes Pennsylvania hospitals are seeing fewer mistakes and fewer deaths. Pennsylvania hospitals and doctors have put better safety measures in place – like 40 question pre-surgery checklists – to help prevent medical errors from happening in the first place. The quickest way to enact change is to make it unprofitable – you gotta love capitalism!

Washington should follow Pennsylvania’s lead and make sure all insurance companies stop paying for preventable medical errors.

Source: CBS Evening News – March 17, 2008

100,000 people die each year as result of medical errors. That is more than breast cancer or car accidents cause each year. It’s the health care industries dirty little secret. Hospitals and doctors hide behind secret review meetings where the error is discussed but rarely – if ever – freely disclosed to the public. The public is kept in the dark in favor of profits over safety.

Drug companies and health care facilities need to work together to find better ways to guard against mixing up children’s medicines with adult. Better color coding of the labels could have prevented the 3 deaths and Quaid daughters ordeal. The drug maker eventually did this but the Quaid’s got caught before their hospital had used up the old medicine and brought in new with the better labeling.

We as citizens can help by demanding that our politicians make stopping repeated and preventable medical errors a priority and require better safe guards on drug distribution in health care facilities. So fatal medical errors do not keep happening over and over.

Adding insult to injury Rocky was billed $66,000 for the surgery that nearly killed him. And he was left  permanently injured.

This kind of thing happens everyday to Washington medical malpractice victims. Finally something is being done. Gov. Gregoire along with hospitals, doctors, surgery centers in the state, and medical providers last week pledged to never again bill patients for egregious medical errors known as– “never events”–because they should never happen in the first place. The “never events” list includes 28 situations ranging from surgery on the wrong body part or wrong patient to foreign objects -like sponges and clamps- left inside patients in surgery. Also covered are death or serious disabilities caused by contaminated drugs or devices, and burns suffered in the hospital.

Rocky was left with permanent injury to his throat and vocal cords as well as the bill for over $66,000. He hired an experienced medical malpractice attorney and sued the hospital and doctors for the serious medical error that never should have happened. He ultimately settled his case for 7 million dollars.

Failures to take responsibility for medical errors is why medical malpractice attorneys are so busy. If more doctors and hospitals would apologize for mistakes and not charge patients for the procedure, perhaps medical malpractice attorneys would find themselves out of work.

If you have suffered through a medical mistake that never should have happened you should speak with a medical malpractice attorney as soon as possible.

Source: Seattle PI, January 28, 2008 by reporter Carol Ostrom “Hospital to tear up bills for medical mistakes“