Sabatini and Associates, LLC

Vermont hospitals recently adopted a policy not to seek payment from patients or insurance companies if certain rare errors are made that result in serious harm. The 14 Vermont hospitals will follow a uniform system that officials said will make the hospitals more accountable. The policy will cover eight, serious medical errors including surgery performed on a wrong body part or on the wrong patient, incorrect surgery, artificial insemination with the wrong donor or injury caused by a medication error. Vermont is he third state to adopt the voluntary policy. It is unclear what if any effect this new policy may have on the rate of errors committed by hospitals. It will certainly have a positive effect on uninsured patients who suffered injuries due to a medical error. These patients will no longer have the added misery of paying medical bills resulting from certain serious medical errors.

Georgette Watson, 46, was the principal of a Chicago middle school. Monday she went in for what should have been a routine root canal procedure. Today an autopsy is scheduled to determine why she died in the dentist’s chair. Watson reportedly went into cardiac arrest while in the offices of Feldman and Feldman, a Lakeview dentist. It is unclear which dentist was performing the root canal.  She had been given a sedative before the procedure but news reports are not specific as to whether it was a local anesthetic or she was unconscious. Back in July, Joseph David Feldman and Lawrence W. Feldman were put on probation by the state Department of Financial and Professional Regulation “due to substandard dental work and failure to maintain records.”
 

Connecticut law requires that a medical malpractice lawsuit be initiated within two years from the date when the injury is first sustained or discovered or in the exercise of reasonable care should have been discovered. The law also requires that it be initiated within three years from the date of the act or omission complained of (CGS § 52-584). (The courts typically refer to the two year period as the statute of limitation and the three year limit as the statute of repose). Thus, a person who believes he has been injured because of medical malpractice must initiate the lawsuit within three years of the act of malpractice even if he does not discover and could not have reasonably discovered the injury and its link to the alleged malpractice until more than three years have passed.

Not nearly enough doctors report medical errors and if you have been injured by a doctor’s error do not be surprised that the medical error will not be disclosed. You need to hire a Connecticut medical malpractice lawyer to discover the medical error.  In a recent survery, about half of doctors surveyed say they do not report incompetent colleagues or serious medical errors.  The startling revelation appears in the Annals of Internal Medicine. In the survey 3,504 practicing doctors were asked whether they understand and support professional standards.  93 percent of doctors responding believe one should always alert authorities when facing potential medical errors or malpractice. But in reality only 55 percent said they always did so.  Cardiologists were the least likely to tell others when they observe a serious medical error or an impaired or incompetent doctor.  Next least likely were family practitioners. Other specialties surveyed include anesthesiologists, surgeons, internists and pediatricians.

Rhode Island Hospital was fined $50,000 and reprimanded by the state Department of Health Monday after its third instance this year of a doctor performing brain surgery in the wrong side of a patient’s head.

“We are extremely concerned about this continuing pattern,” Director of Health David R. Gifford said in a written statement. “While the hospital has made improvements in the operating room, they have not extended these changes to the rest of the hospital.” Read more about the hospital’s medical malpractice.  If you have been injured by medical malpractice, contact our Connecticut medical malpractice lawyers.