Law Firm Resources & News

Drugs are always in the news! There is Vioxx, and Celebrex, and the hormone-replacement drug Prempro, and the birth-control patch Ortho Evra and on and on and on. In the last few days the following articles have appeared in the media: o FDA’s Position on New Drugs May Hurt Merck’s Arcoxia Bid o Big Pharma’s…

In this article on MSNBC, a Canadian woman is suing her doctor, who told her she had cancer and administered six months of chemo therapy before she discovered from another doctor that she did not have cancer at all! The woman lost her hair, shed 60 pounds, and became anemic as well as contracting a…

In 1972, Medicare expanded its benefits to include disabled individuals. Unfortunately, while expanding their services, Medicare instituted a waiting period designed to limit costs and make certain that only people with severe and long lasting disabilities would qualify. Many groups have worked to eliminate the unfair waiting period, without success. The only two exceptions are…

In this article, a West Virginia family has filed a lawsuit after their father had exploratory surgery for abdominal pain. The man was given drugs to paralyze his muscles, but was not given general anesthesia until 16 minutes after the first cut into his abdomen. The man committed suicide two weeks after the surgery, two…

Many nursing homes do not want to be held accountable for acts of negligence which kill or injure their residents. How do they escape legal responsibility? Well, did the admission agreement your dad signed (or you signed for your mother) when first admitted to the facility contain a mandatory arbitration clause? If so, you may…

Most of our articles on this blog highlight problems with health care providers and health care system. Well, this time we are rooting for the doctors! A new policy announced by mega-health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, Inc., threatens to fine doctors who refer patients to out-of-network laboratories for medical tests. Most current health plans require members…

Yes…you read that correctly…hospital staff calling 911 on the telephone to save their patients! Sound too bad to be true? Unfortunately not! The New York Times reported that this actually happened recently in Texas, where a 44-year-old man named Steve Spivey developed breathing problems after spine surgery. No physician was working there when the staff…

A recent article in the New York Times examines the extensive problems that many elderly policyholders are having with long-term-care insurance providers who are not delivering on their promises. Policyholders who made their payments in good faith now find themselves facing claims denials and lengthy runarounds that delay processing of claims to the point that…

In Florida a jury found that a West Palm Beach nursing home failed to honor the living will and advance directives of a 92 year-old resident with Alzheimer’s disease who had stipulated that she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means. The jurors ruled that the home should pay $150,000 in damages.…

A one year stay in a New Jersey nursing home costs approximately $98,178, or $268.98 a day. Nationwide the average cost of a single year in a private nursing home is $74,806, which is about 15% more than what nursing home care cost in 2004. The source of this information is a study conducted by…

We have previously written about cases in which our law firm was involved where the wrong patient received another’s patient’s physician ordered blood transfusion. We have also talked about physicians’ ordering medication for a patient with a known allergy to the medication simply because the doctor either failed to check the patient’s chart for documented…

There is a wonderful essay in today’s New York Times, about the balance between a patient’s request, and doctor’s policy. What if the two are in conflict – who wins?http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/health/03essa.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1175629105-k+zaPwO4G3Y1M1sUNwOAWgWe see it often in Nursing Homes. Families will request a test, or treatment, the physician says is not necessary. On the flip side, we have…