Surgery, no matter how big or small, is a serious matter. Whether you’re having your appendix removed, correcting your eyesight through Lasik surgery, or undergoing a coronary bypass, there are always significant risks involved. Although surgeries are typically used to improve the length or quality of the patient’s life, in rare cases an error will occur during surgery. The...
Read MoreWhen many people in Kansas City think of medical malpractice, they likely think of a physician committing an error that causes serious harm to a patient. While this is often the case, the physician is not always solely responsible for the incident. Oftentimes, the hospital itself is liable. Understanding whether the hospital is responsible — at least in part...
Read MoreThe Missouri House of Representatives is scheduled to vote soon on a legislative bill that passed easily through the state’s Senate last week. The bill that is now one step closer to being enacted as law is a tort reform measure that, ostensibly at least, is intended to lower insurance premiums by capping awards for persons injured through medical...
Read MoreAdverse patient outcomes at nursing homes in Missouri and nationally can cover a lot of territory. Bedsores — often referred to as pressure ulcers — are not an uncommon occurrence at nursing facilities. Stories from across the country chronicle with some regularity episodes of patient malnutrition and dehydration. Medication errors are an obvious source of concern in the industry....
Read MoreAccording to a recent paper in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, some 70 percent of doctors never bother to clean their ties. Unfortunately, about a third of those ties test positive for Staphylococcus aureus — the bacteria that causes staph infections. Those white lab coats doctors wear? According to the paper, a survey found that the average...
Read MoreConsumers Union, the nonprofit group that publishes Consumer Reports magazine, has just published a ratings review of some 2,463 U.S. hospitals across the nation that specifically measures the quality of the surgical care they offer. The ratings, which are the first of their kind, were based on a survey of the records of Medicaid patients. The survey considered how...
Read MoreIn 2006, a Tulsa man says, a plastic surgeon convinced him to undergo a simple rhinoplasty, or cosmetic nose job. That surgery was badly botched, and another surgery was required. And then another. Tragically, after a total of 22 surgeries the man is now left with no nose at all and has been forced to breathe through a straw...
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