This is what scares me

[New Guy]

Looks like insurance will only cover a small portion of this. Hope she funded her retirement accounts

http://www.radiologybusiness.com/topics/healthcare-economics/radiologist’s-appeal-denied-59m-wrongful-death-suit

[SValleyMD]

An 88 year old getting a 5.9 million dollar judgement?

Crazy.

[VagabondMD]

Philadelphia/Eastern PA is known to be a judicial ************************ hole for med mal defense and, more generally, tort defense.

It would be interesting to see the x-ray in question. Usually, it is pretty obvious when an oral/nasal feeding tube has been passed into the lung, but there are some pitfalls and tricks.

[G]

Well...part of why this is reportable is because it is so absurd.

I do wonder if there is more to the story. $3.5M for pain and suffering (n.b. the guy expired the next day, so what is that, $2500/min?) sounds like punitive damages.

Brand new study in EM that shows the only correlation to being named in suit are practice volume and duration of practice. The longer you play in the minefield...I guess you have to hope your final judgment isn't case reportable in a trade journal....

[Lithium]

Wow.  Not even umbrella insurance usually covers that.  Another reason to stop playing when you've won the game.

[G]

It gets even riper if you read through the case.  Patient has dementia, resides in an LTC, was admitted for pneumonia, had a cardiac arrest in hospital, then a missed misplaced feeding tube, with feeds into lung, dies.  (Not sure why they didn't tube him and thrash him in the ICU for several more days before withdrawing, I mean, an 88 year old nursing home patient with dementia and multiple medical problems who has already coded in hospital has a very long life ahead of him....)  Suing for the estate is his daughter who misses daddy so very much, although is documented in the nursing home records to be clearly uninvolved.

According to the opinion: "This [C]ourt will not find a verdict excessive unless it is so grossly excessive as to shock our sense of justice."  I would hate to see what they do find shocking.

This kind of garbage will go away if doctors would vote with their feet.

[wideopenspaces]

Wow, that is crazy.
Why won't malpractice cover that? It said the doctor and the group were responsible for 4M, shouldn't insurance cover that?

[Zaphod]

I dont understand? Arent there any rules to judgements, calculating economic future earnings, p/s sure, lifespan..this is ridiculous. People love to talk about how bad California is for doctors but the med mal here is excellent at least. I mean in reality the odds this guy makes it out of the hospital with perfect care were very low.

Malpractice wont cover it because its well over the common 1/3m.

Doctors should just up and leave these places. Of course judges have almost zero accountability and is one of many large issues with our legal system.

[hightower]

This just goes to show that it really matters where you practice.  http://epmonthly.com/article/the-medical-malpractice-rundown-a-state-by-state-report-card/

I'm happy to report that I practice in one of the better states, however it would still be horrible to get sued no matter what the outcome.

I certainly hope the doc and the group she works for are able to pay for this with insurance money.  An umbrella policy in this situation would certainly help, but ouch this hurts.

[jhwkr542]

I'm glad to work in two states that cap non economic damages. Those always seem to be the numbers that get out of hand in cases like this, so if there's a cap on those, it gets really hard to go over the malpractice insurance limit

[Complete_newbie]

Usually whatever is passed as judgement is not really payed is my understanding .

And progeny suing to milk a parents death who they didn't love because they "oh suffered so much!!" I've seen so many times it's shocking the justice system gets duped every time. Such garbage. Total BS. Don't like lawyers for this very reason. Bad doctors out there but lawyers suing docs for this type of stuff...lower than low.

Tube misplacement is is not THAT obvious , I've seen people trip up on it.

[Zaphod]

Complete_newbie wrote:

Usually whatever is passed as judgement is not really payed is my understanding .

And progeny suing to milk a parents death who they didn’t love because they “oh suffered so much!!” I’ve seen so many times it’s shocking the justice system gets duped every time. Such garbage. Total BS. Don’t like lawyers for this very reason. Bad doctors out there but lawyers suing docs for this type of stuff…lower than low.

Tube misplacement is is not THAT obvious , I’ve seen people trip up on it.

Click to expand...

It wasnt the lawyer, there was an expert physician who testified and did it. It is unfortunately doctors.

[Complete_newbie]

Lawyer took the case and the. Found the "expert" witness. Pennsylvania is a legal ************************ hole though. Can't pay me enough to practice there

[Hatton]

This sounds very bad.  I live in a bad state but a good county.  It is impossible to impanel a jury here that does not have a couple of engineers on it.  They understand statistics and discount plaintiff attorney theatrics.

[MPMD]

this sounds like a really bizarre situation, almost comically in favor of the plaintiff's side.

is there some missing piece of info here?