Law Firm Resources & News

Next time you take medicine, consider the surprisingly lucrative and circuitous path of that scrap of paper known as a drug prescription form. After the pharmacy fills your order, it sells information about your drug and doctor – though not necessarily about you – to a health-data company, such as IMS Health Inc., Verispan L.L.C.…

There is a need for more long term care services with people living longer. The goal should be to help senior citizens be more comfortable and that means in their own home. Many senior citizens are turning to a new type of “nursing home.” They are staying “at home” and letting the nursing and other…

The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has started a monthly video news show for healthcare professionals called Patient Safety News (PSN). It covers significant new product approvals, recalls and safety alerts, and offers important tips onprotecting patients. Read the complete stories and watch or download the video program at http://www.fda.gov/psn. While these PSN stories…

New guidelines, published in December by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, urge caution in anesthetizing children. Doctors and dentists who sedate children should be specially trained and use age-appropriate equipment. The special equipment should include emergency “crash carts” stocked with drugs and devices designed for young patients. The…

An assisted living facility is not a nursing home. It doesn’t provide medical care and rarely has trained nurses on site. Assisted living facilities are not inspected by or supervised by the federal government. Typically, such facilities are monitored by a state agency – and they are doing a terrible job! Not only are the…

How many times have we read in the newspapers or heard from friends about a resident-upon-resident attack in a nursing home? It happens frequently! Dementia and frustration can lead the most tranquil of residents to push, pull, and hit other residents. Some residents are very “territorial” and see roommates, and others, as violators of their…

Now that should get their attention! Cottonwood Healthcare in Woodland has received an “AA” citation and a $90,000 fine, the most severe under state law, after the California Department of Health Services (CDHS) concluded an investigation into what lead to the death of 89-year-old Eva Anita Morgan. Records show that Morgan was died on March…

I think so don’t you? Isn’t that what we teach our children? Admit when you are wrong and say you are sorry! Now, there is a national movement to encourage healthcare professionals to follow such simple rules when their errors constitute medical negligence and the patient is injured as a result. The group calls itself…

Our local paper, the Roanoke Times, ran a good article from the AP this morning:http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DIAGNOSING_STROKES?SITE=VAROA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT. The Article states that new studies reveal that MRIs provide superior diagnosing images over CT scans for physicians when seeking evidence of a stroke. The study said with MRIs, the physicians diagnosed the stroke correctely 83% of the time, where…

On our firm website – https://frithlawfirm.com/, we speak about a bacterial outbreak in an assisted living facility that lead to the death of at least two residents…. but can you imagine, two babies have died because staff did not properly sterilize instruments.http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/16533941.htm. What a tragedy – and one that could have been prevented. I know…

The typical medical school education teaches it’s doctors-to-be to match the patient’s symptoms to a mental medical encyclopedia of diagnoses. (A great episode from the TV comedy Seinfeld comes to mind wherein Kramer’s complaints of certain symptoms are correctly diagnosed by the doctor in training as gonorrhea!) However, Dr. Jerome Groopman, a professor of medicine…