Illinois Deserves the Truth

Strong Reactions to Marion VA Mismanagement

Here's an update on the Marion VA medical center that was scourged by reports of poor care and abuse.  The VA just released another report on wrongdoing at the hospital, this one about poor management (the first one dealt with actual medical care).  As The Southern reports, Illinois' federal lawmakers are sounding off.

Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Springfield and Barack Obama of Chicago made a joint statement.

"This new report from the VA confirms many of our suspicions about the problem that existed at the Marion VA Medical Center," they said. "The report paints a disturbing picture - a management culture that compounded problems at the facility; management at the regional level that did not serve as a quality check on the Marion facility; and no way for employees to complain or make meaningful suggestions about problems when they arose."

The senators said, "Our veterans and their families have made incredible sacrifices for this country, and when they return home, we owe them access to the best health care. Today's report proves that this was not the case at the VA medical facility in Marion."

People are rightly suspicious of how serious legislators are about seeing improvements and holding people accountable.  Like this reader, who recently commented on one of our posts.  Illinois congressional delegates meet with the Secretary of Veterans Affairs this week, so we shall see what comes of it.  In the meantime, we can hope that the widows of victims, who are seeking redress through the civil justice system, force accountability themselves.

Thanks to John Homan for helpful correspondence

Malpractice Settlement Helps Rebuild Lives

From the Sun-Times, yet another moving example of why lawsuits are so critical to many. 

There were several points in his life when Jaylen Whaley wouldn't have had much of a chance -- if not for his sister.

Born to a drug-addicted mother, his older sister immediately took him in.

At 18 months, he needed heart surgery and, again, his big sister -- LaShaunda Whaley -- was there, already in the process of adopting him.

So when that heart surgery went horribly wrong and Jaylen was left physically and mentally disabled, with no hope to ever lead a normal life, it came as no surprise that his sister never left his side. She continued with plans to adopt him, even leaving her job to care for him.

Thankfully, the University of Chicago Medical Center agreed to settle the Whaley’s negligence lawsuit and compensate them $12 million.  The money is going into a trust that will ensure Jaylen has a "wheelchair-accessible home and around-the-clock care."  Who knows what would have happened to Jaylen and LaShaunda if it hadn’t been for their settlement.

The cost of infection

Medical mistakes of any kind are tragic, but they are most frightening when the victim is an innocent child.  A new study from this month's issue of the journal Pediatrics looks at quality of care at children's hospitals.  Researchers studied 38 children's hospitals nationwide and estimated the cost of extended stays caused by infections and other preventable complications.  Among the findings:

• Of the 430,000 children in the study, more than 6,600 suffered complications caused by their care.
• Some complications occurred in up to 4 percent of children treated.
• Children are three times more susceptible to infections in hospitals compared with adults.
• Eliminating infections due to medical care would save over $700 million each year.

See the actual report from Pediatrics or click here to read the Post-Dispatch's article on it.

Widows of Marion VA victims want justice

A long time has passed since we commented on the malpractice scandal down at the VA hospital in Marion.  You might remember the story: the hospital closed after it was revealed that at least 34 patients were seriously injured, and some (no one knows exactly how many) died, as a result of substandard medical care.  Several deaths were linked to a single doctor, Jose Veizaga-Mendez.  Now, the widows of two of his victims are filing a suit against the government. These widows lost their husbands unnecessarily. Let's hope they get the justice they seek.

Hospitals are catching on to full disclosure

Last week we wrote about a hospital program at the University of Illinois Medical Center of full disclosure in reporting physician errors.  This isn’t the only place with such a policy.  The NY Times yesterday ran a story about how full disclosure programs have been successful all over the country.  These programs encourage physicians to admit fault and apologize when they make mistakes.  Hospitals then compensate the patient so they don't have to worry about fighting a lawsuit.  It works, and look no further than the program here in IL for proof.

The number of malpractice filings against the University of Illinois has dropped by half since it started its program just over two years ago, said Dr. Timothy B. McDonald, the hospital’s chief safety and risk officer. In the 37 cases where the hospital acknowledged a preventable error and apologized, only one patient has filed suit. Only six settlements have exceeded the hospital’s medical and related expenses.

The program in Michigan that inspired McDonald has also been successful.

At the University of Michigan Health System, one of the first to experiment with full disclosure, existing claims and lawsuits dropped to 83 in August 2007 from 262 in August 2001

Patients deserve this kind of honesty and fairness in their medical care.  Many victims of malpractice each year don't file a lawsuit and never get any compensation.  If this is something hospitals care about, we should see more of these programs.  Plus, they have shown to decrease malpractice claims, so they're good for everyone!

Loyola medical liability conference

Last week we went to a Loyola sponsored conference on “Medical Liability and the Illinois Civil Justice System”.  Speakers were lined up to talk about various topics, some tired (no-fault insurance schemes), some fresh (full disclosure malpractice programs).

CJ&D’s Executive Director Joanne Doroshow was asked to talk about “health courts,” which are basically administrative panels designed to replace civil courts as a way of settling malpractice claims.  “Tort reformers” like to think they would speed up the settlement and payment process, but really they are a terrible idea. The health care industry would be the "experts" that the administrative panel would have to turn to, so the courts would almost always favor corporate interests over injured victims. In any case, health courts don’t have much support, since they are impractical and unconstitutional (read the CJ&D report "Why Health Courts are Unconstitutional" for more).

I thought the most interesting topic discussed was full disclosure programs for reporting physician errors at hospitals.  Tim McDonald, the chief safety officer at the University of Illinois Medical Center Chicago, talked about how the full disclosure program he installed has resulted in across-the-board improvements in areas like quality of care and speedy malpractice payouts.  I was pleased that the first statement out of his mouth was that he was not in favor of tort reform and never will be.  He went on to talk about how much of a struggle it was to implement his philosophy at the medical center.  For example, he told a story about how in interviewing defense firms, he opened with this hypothetical situation: a man undergoes surgery to have a leg removed, but doctors mistakenly amputate the wrong limb.  There is no question the hospital is at fault.  What would you advise?, he asked them.  13 out of 16 firms interviewed advised the hospital to deny fault anyway.

His talk was the most popular of the day, which was surprising since much of the crowd came from the health care industry or from defense firms.  Hopefully this is a sign that more hospitals are open to exploring ways of improving patient safety and increasing accountability, instead of just toeing the insurance company line of avoiding payouts by denying fault at all costs.

When Doctors Dose Themselves

Men'sHealth published a disturbing article about drug addict doctors - focusing on the high concentration of anesthesiologists  who rank high among addict doctors.  It is very sobering to think of what can go wrong under the best of circumstances, but what happens when the person in charge of your life is addicted to drugs? 

The article tells a sad story of Herman Cole and his, 36-year-old wife, Sadie, who was to have a straightforward tubal ligation, and ended up with severe brain damage.  After Herman was told by a doctor that her injuries centered around mysterious circumstances, a nurse who was in the operating room pulled him aside and told him he should hire an attorney and start asking questions.  Herman took her advice and hired Richard Silver, who began digging around and found out the truth.

Sadie's anesthesiologist -- Dr. Jay Angeluzzi -- had behaved bizarrely during the procedure. First, he'd failed to recognize that Sadie had stopped breathing, even after the electronic monitor's alarms sounded. Then, instead of examining her, he'd turned off the alarms and left the room. It would be 9 critical minutes before anyone noticed Sadie was not responsive. By the time she was revived, her brain had been oxygen starved and ruined.

Dr. Angeluzzi, Silver discovered, had a history of drug abuse, psychiatric treatment, and failed institutional rehabilitations. He'd left Connecticut's Hospital of St. Raphael in 1985 after abusing tranquilizers while on duty, and had moved to Massachusetts, where his license was put on probation and he had to submit to special monitoring. But after a few years, Dr. Angeluzzi applied for a job at Norwalk Hospital, never mentioning his drug problems. One of his old bosses even made it easy for him, saying that Dr. Angeluzzi had moved to Massachusetts because of "family problems."

What makes this story even more tragic is that the doctor after this incident was allowed to practice medicine, even at the same hospital, until sadly he did this again to another patient which lead to death.  This horrific tale is unfortunately not isolated.  As we in Illinois saw with the Marion VA hospital, a bad doctor, Jose Veizaga-Mendez, was allowed to jump states, be hired and contribute to the deaths of at least 13 patients.  (It just so happens that both Veizaga-Mendez and Angeluzzi practiced in MA.)

While, one of the things that shocked me the most about this article is that the profile of a junkie doctor is, "...tend to be young, ambitious, highly talented physicians who graduated at the top of their medical-school classes and are ranked among the most popular and requested at their hospitals."  I must say all of the attributes are the ones I tend to look for in my healthcare provider.

As the article hints that many doctors continue to practice even with severe drug addictions and their colleagues turn a blind eye, a patient needs every resource available to help protect themselves and hold bad doctors accountable.  This is why accessibility to doctor's disciplinary and legal action information is very important to everyone.  Illinois is one of the few states to have a website devoted to providing this important information.  (You can access it at  http://www.idfpr.com/)

Additionally, we need to allow victims of medical malpractice to have clear access to the Civil Justice System, where they can hold doctors accountable and warn others of potential bad doctors.  Lawsuits help warn others of potentially bad doctors and is an effective tool to get rid of them.    

Disciplining bad doctors

Illinoisans got some encouraging news from a Public Citizen study released earlier this week.  We ranked 12th in the nation in their study of how effective state medical boards are at disciplining bad doctors.  Springfield's paper covered the Illinois results,

Illinois took 170 “serious disciplinary actions” against the state’s 41,581 doctors in 2007, and Illinois ranked 12th highest among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in the average disciplinary action rate per 1,000 doctors from 2005 through 2007.

It's great that our state medical board is doing so much to hold bad doctors responsible for mistakes.  On the other hand, these results highlight how serious of a problem this is.  We need to keep disciplining bad doctors, but we also need an open civil justice system to hold accountable those who are still practicing.

Find the full Public Citizen study here.

"Say Whaaaat?" Award Number Three

Cross posted from The Pop Tort by John Guyette.

It is not often that we give out a "Say Whaaaat?" Award even though many are deserving of this award on a daily basis.  We want to keep it special and therefore we have reserved it only for those unique individuals and groups who truly defy common sense with a kind-of reckless abandon.  So with that (drum roll please) the third "Say Whaaaat?" Award in the history of the Pop Tort goes to...

NBC's Chief Medical Editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman. 

This morning on the "Today Show," Dr. Snyderman single handedly dismantled what could have been an informative report on how the sad state of US health care is negatively impacting women.  At the end of the segment, the good doctor blames the woes of a shotty US Health care system, including the skyrocketing costs, on...."defensive medicine"?  I am not making this up.  Congratulations Dr. Snyderman for going against what is commonly referred to as "logic"!

Never mind the fact that 47 million people don't have health insurance.  Or that 98,000 people are killed each year by medical errors in hospitals, many of which are easily preventable. Did I mention that these easily preventable errors account for billions, thats right billions, of dollars each year?  Thankfully we have groups like CJ&D that can call these people on their nonsense.  Check out this letter from CJ&D Executive Director, Joanne Doroshow, to the "Today Show".

I think I'll keep my radio off now

The Illinois State Medical Society (ISMS) and its (not so) friendly malpractice insurer, ISMIE Mutual, are already attempting to "influence" our state Supreme Court judges over their upcoming decision on medical malpractice caps.  As this article reports, they are dishing out hundreds of thousands of dollars on a 6,000 spot radio ad campaign that will run from now until the end of September, when the caps decision will likely be heard.

They have a right to buy radio airtime, but as the story points out, their timing is a little fishy.  There aren’t any malpractice proposals in the state legislature right now, leading one only to conclude that they are trying to peddle their argument to our judges.  In a perfect world we wouldn’t worry because judges would be impartial to political pressure, but we’re all familiar with the truth about the politicization of judicial elections.