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The Attorneys at the Law Offices of Thomas L. Gallivan, PLLC provide effective, aggressive representation to individuals injured in the New York area. Our priority is to maximize the recovery of our clients injured due to the neglect of others.

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A recent study by The Doctors Company found that misdiagnosis is the top allegation in medical malpractice lawsuits filed across the country that involve children. The researchers conducting the study said “misdiagnosis” included missed, failed or the wrong diagnosis and were largely the result of inadequate medical examinations, according to Fierce Healthcare. The study conducted by a non-profit doctors group involved reviewing over 1,200 medical malpractice lawsuits filed across the country through 2008 and 2017.

The report also illuminated several prominent trends in medical malpractice lawsuits. For example, poor communication was cited as a factor causing the child’s injury in 15 and 22 percent of the lawsuits. Systemic failures were also a common factor. Systemic failures typically meant not notifying patients of important test results, according to the online news agency.

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Once named one of ‘America’s Most Beautiful Physicians’, a New York doctor is now being hauled into court by former patients who say they lost his medical records and over-prescribed powerful pain medications, among several other allegations. Reported by NBC New York, cardiovascular surgeon David Gruener has recently come under scrutiny by government regulators and patients who describe less-than-competent experiences with the media-darling doctor. Despite allegations of overprescribing opioid medications, the doctor’s record is currently unblemished. The lawsuits against the doctor will likely change his spotless record soon, though.

The allegations against the doctor began surfacing when one of his former patients blamed him for an opioid addiction that became a $7,000-per-day habit. According to the patient, Dr. Gruener prescribed hundreds of Demerol shots and other opioids during 2011 and 2012. The surgeon prescribed all of this medication despite “clear signs of addiction” in, what the patient is alleging, a “clearly fraudulent scheme” to keep him addicted and the income flowing freely to his doctor. In the course of litigating his lawsuit against the doctor, the patient sought his own personal medical records. Unfortunately, the doctor could not produce these medical records, along with those of any other patients before 2012.

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The New York Medical Board is slow to punish doctors who lose their license to practice in other states. According to The New York Post, the state licensing board for doctors took between “a few weeks to several months” to stop 14 doctors who had lost their ability to practice medicine in New Jersey over the last six months. Perhaps even more worrisome, the local newspaper found that two of those doctors were still practicing medicine despite being deemed unfit to practice just across the river. New Jersey did not perform much better at ensuring potentially dangerous doctors stayed away from the state’s patients – five doctors with their New York licenses suspended in the last six months were still practicing in the state.

Perhaps overstating the obvious, Patient-safety advocate Betsy McCaughey told The Post that licensing board’s slow movement on incompetent doctors “could lead to unnecessary additional harm to patients.” The founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths then harped on the unnecessary risk to patients by stating “all you have to do is send an email.” McCaughey correctly notes that the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners receives a daily alert for doctors whose license has been suspended or permanently revoked. With this information delivered each day, it is not unreasonable to expect a prompt investigation.

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New York City spent approximately $1 billion settling tort lawsuits last year. According to the Wall Street Journal, this hefty sum actually represents an 8 percent decrease from the previous year. Tort claims include most personal injury lawsuits, such as slip-and-fall accidents, motor-vehicle damages, and medical malpractice lawsuits.

The decrease is largely driven by a small number of settlements against the New York Police Department. The newspaper reports that settlements against the NYPD reached only $230 million. Last year, settlements against the police were approximately $336 million. Despite the almost one-third decrease, the NYPD is still the most expensive city agency when it comes to settling lawsuits. According to Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office, the Department of Transportation, Department of Correction, Department of Sanitation, and the Department of Education round out the top five most expensive agencies when it comes to personal injury and tort lawsuits.

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The federal government opened a probe into a hospital run by the Department of Veteran Affairs. According to the New York Daily News, the federal probe is a response to a veteran’s allegations of neglect, medical malpractice, and elder abuse. The local newspaper describes the experience of Gary Zambito, who served in the armed forces during the Vietnam War. During his military service, Zambito suffered an injury which led to health complications for the next fifty years. While he trusted the VA to look after his care, Zambito describes a nightmare of incompetence and fraud. Zambito says the care provided by the VA was so insufficient that it “nearly killed” him. After suing the government for $4 million, the federal government opened a probe into the nursing home and hospitals for criminal malfeasance.

According to the veteran, he sought help from his local VA hospital on Long Island back in 2015 when he started experiencing “dizzy spells” that would commonly end in blackouts. Zambito says he told doctors that being knocked unconscious in the Vietnam War led to heart problems – specifically, an irregular and rapid heart rate. Despite this knowledge, doctors did not seem interested in drawing the connection between Zambito’s fainting spells and his heart condition. After being told that there was nothing the doctors could do to help him, Zambito spent the next three years simply enduring the dizzy spells and fainting. According to his attorney, the veteran fell and injured himself 18 times over the next 14 months. Finally, he went to a private doctor who prescribed the drug Flecainide Acetate, which eliminated the fainting problem immediately.

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In a major victory for New York nurses, several major hospitals agreed to establish minimum staffing levels for nurses at hospitals. The unions representing the nurses in negotiations had threatened to a 10,000-strong strike at the hospitals if the hospitals did not satisfy their demands. Marc Kramer, the lead negotiator for the hospitals, told The New York Times, “This significant investment in our nursing teams will ultimately benefit patients in the long term, while preserving hospital’s flexibility to deliver the individual, tailored health care that our institutions are known for around the world.” The hospitals agreeing to minimum staffing levels for nurses include Mount Sinai, New York-Presbyterian, and Montefiore hospital systems.

Nurses have fought for established minimum nursing ratios for years. Frustrated by the Albany’s reluctance to take action, the nurses finally threatened to walk off the job this year. While the exact ratios have not been decided yet, California’s mandatory minimum ratios differ depending on the circumstances – more nurses are required in the ICU than an urgent care clinic. For example, California requires one nurse for every eight healthy babies in a nursery ward. The New York Times says that New York-Presbyterian nurses describe a workload that is at least double what would be legal in California.

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A new study released by the American Journal of Industrial Medicine showed that falls remain the second leading cause of death for workers across the country. The study showed that falls represented 14 percent of all workplace fatalities in the United States during an 11-year period between 2003 and 2014. Workers with the highest rates of fatal falls were employed in the construction industry, representing 42.2 percent of all fatalities, and installation, maintenance, and repair, representing 12.5 percent of all workplace fatalities caused by falls.

Overall, a total of 8,800 workers died in America as the result of a fall during this 11-year period. The falls were further divided into the “length of the fall” and, unsurprisingly, workers that fell a single story or more were more likely to die as a result – with 84.7 percent of all worker deaths caused by a fall of “more than one level.” For workers that fell, but not a full story or level, only 12.7 percent of workers died. The remaining 2.6 percent passed away from “all other types of falls.”

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A Tennessee woman is suing her doctor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center for allegedly operating on the wrong kidney. The woman, Carla Miller, went to the Nashville hospital in November 2017 running a fever and complaining of pain in her side. The medical professionals at the hospital decided Miller would need a stent put in her right kidney. A stent is a small mesh tube and was intended to connect Miller’s right kidney to her bladder. Unfortunately, the doctors botched the surgery and put the stent on her left kidney, which was functioning normally at the time.

Now, Miller is suing the hospital for medical malpractice. She says that the failed surgery caused permanent damage and she will now be on dialysis for the rest of her life. Further, Miller will need to undergo two more surgeries – one surgery to remove the misplaced stent and one surgery to place the stent in the correct location. According to the lawsuit filed by Miller, she is seeking $25 million in damages from the hospital. Describing the ordeal to CBS New York, Miller said, “This type of error is shocking and inexcusable in modern medicine, and it is mind-boggling that it could occur at an institution like Vanderbilt.”

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The Joint Commission released its report on the top sentinel events of 2018 and, unsurprisingly, patient falls and “unintended retention of a foreign body” took the top spot for another year. According to the Joint Commission, a sentinel event is “an unexpected event in a healthcare setting that results in death or serious injury to a patient.” While the overall number of sentinel events has declined in the last decade, some hospitals have seen a sharp increase.

Overall, these are the top ten sentinel events recorded in 2018 followed by the number of events self-reported to The Joint Commission:

  1. Falls (111)
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A distracted driver is almost 30 times more likely to crash in a highway work zone. In a recent study reported on by Science Daily, researchers at the University of Missouri found that drivers who answered a phone call, texted, or reported being distracted by a passenger were 29 times more likely to be in a collision at or near a federal highway work zone. Given the decade-long increase in the number of car accidents on American roadways, state and federal transportation agencies will use the study to implement “countermeasures” to reduce the number of distracted drivers.

Traffic safety experts say the results of the study are not entirely surprising. Distracted driving is dangerous and substantially increases the risk of a car accident or pedestrian accident. Further, work zones typically have riskier road conditions such as poor signage, narrower lanes, and reduced visibility. The study, which included only data from federal highways, also pointed out that the high speed limit on highways – generally, 55 mph – meant that collisions would be harder to prevent and any resulting injuries more severe. The data included more than 3,000 drivers and covered more than 50 million miles.

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