By: Russell Keener  —  February 11, 2011
 

The pri­mary spon­sor of HR5, the Tort Reform Bill in Con­gress is Geor­gia physi­cian / con­gress­man, Phil Gin­grey. This is impor­tant because Dr. Gin­grey has been the sub­ject of three med­ical mal­prac­tice claims in his med­ical career. The New York Times and oth­ers have reported that Dr. Gin­grey set­tled a law­suit for $500,000 in a case involv­ing a preg­nant woman whose appen­dici­tis Gin­grey and the other physi­cians in the case failed to diag­nose. The patient’s appen­dix burst. She lost her baby, had a stroke, and now suf­fers from par­tial paral­y­sis. The case is the sub­ject of a Geor­gia appel­late opin­ion that con­tains an alle­ga­tion by the fam­ily (via sworn trial tes­ti­mony) that despite the fact that on two very impor­tant days he never saw the Plain­tiff, he made entries into the chart as though he had.

That wasn’t the only time Gin­grey has been sued. The NYTimes writes:

In a pre­trial depo­si­tion, Dr. Gin­grey tes­ti­fied that he had been sued at least three other times over mal­prac­tice dur­ing his long career. In one case, a jury found against him; in another case, there was a set­tle­ment; and in another case, the patient dropped the action, he testified.

Barry Meier, Mal­prac­tice Bill Raises Issues About a Law­suit, New York Times, Feb. 8, 2011. Another source com­ment­ing on this story editorializes:

It’s no suprise that the doc­tors who get sued a lot are the ones who com­plain the loud­est about “friv­o­lous” law­suits. But the case against Gin­grey seems any­thing but friv­o­lous. [And] it’s just those sorts of seri­ous cases that Gingrey’s bill would restrict…far from sav­ing money, the bill would sim­ply shift the cost of neg­li­gent med­i­cine from the doc­tors and their insur­ance com­pa­nies to the tax­pay­ers through Med­ic­aid and other dis­abil­ity pro­grams. Pri­vate health insur­ers also can often recoup their costs for cov­er­ing mal­prac­tice injuries through those law­suits. Cat­a­strophic injuries like the one suf­fered by Gingrey’s patient pro­filed in the Times tend to bank­rupt peo­ple, leav­ing them reliant on gov­ern­ment health care, and the costs can be significant.

Stephanie Mencimer, Mal­prac­tice Bill Spon­sor Tar­get of Many Suits Him­self, Mother Jones, Feb. 9, 2011. Many med­ical injuries can be pre­vented by mea­sures that don’t even require any spe­cial skills in med­i­cine, such as count­ing instru­ments in the oper­at­ing room.

Law­suit Filed Over Sponge Left In Patient

A county judge in Palm Beach, Florida, filed a law­suit last year against a sur­geon and two radi­ol­o­gists over a sponge that was left inside him after a surgery at Good Samar­i­tan Med­ical Cen­ter. The claim states the sponge rot­ted away part of his intes­tine, leav­ing him with the con­stant need to use the restroom and decreas­ing his qual­ity of life. Bai­ley is ask­ing in the law­suit that the hos­pi­tal be forced to imple­ment reform poli­cies to avoid sim­i­lar mis­takes in the future. Susan Spencer-Wendel, Palm Beach Post.

This injury might have been pre­vented if the sur­geon and/or the cir­cu­lat­ing room nurse at the hos­pi­tal or out­pa­tient surgery cen­ter had sim­ply kept proper track of the instru­ment count.

Study Finds Sur­gi­cal Check­lists Could Dimin­ish Med­ical Mal­prac­tice Claims

Reuters (1/14) reports on a study by a team at the Aca­d­e­mic Med­ical Cen­ter in Ams­ter­dam that found sur­gi­cal check­lists could help limit med­ical mal­prac­tice claims. The study, pub­lished in the Annals of Surgery, iden­ti­fied the pri­mary rea­sons for errors in 294 suc­cess­ful insur­ance claims related to surg­eries from 2004 to 2005. The study found that 29 per­cent of the rea­sons for law­suits could be linked to a step on the checklist.

Expe­ri­enced Atlanta Med­ical Mal­prac­tice Law Firm

For more than 20 years, the Acci­dent and Injury Lawyers at the Keener Law Firm have focused their prac­tice on rep­re­sent­ing indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies cat­a­stroph­i­cally injured or killed in all types of injury inci­dents, includ­ing nurs­ing home abuse and neglect, med­ical mal­prac­tice, wrong­ful death, brain injury, birth injury, auto acci­dents, motor­cy­cle acci­dents, truck­ing acci­dents, work injuries, elder abuse and neglect, mis­filled pre­scrip­tions, child day­care injuries, slip and falls due to dan­ger­ous con­di­tions, pedes­trian injuries, food poi­son­ing, DUI acci­dents, con­struc­tion acci­dents, prop­erty dam­age, and worker’s com­pen­sa­tion. Call toll free at (800) 900‑2400 or locally at (770) 955‑3000 for a free and con­fi­den­tial consultation.