Malpractice Insurance Suits Rampant But Few Plaintiffs Get Pay Outs

According to this study, only 1.6% of Doctors who had a claim that resulted in an lawsuit payment.This fact and the fact that only 1% of all cases of medical negligence are even filed! makes the Tort Reformers arguments seem completely without merit and designed to alarm rather than truthfully inform, the public.

Malpractice Insurance Suits Rampant But Few Plaintiffs Get Pay Outs

Hospital Errors Affect About 1 In Every 3 Patients In The USA

Hospital Errors Affect About 1 In Every 3 Patients In The USA

Jurors deliberated nursing home case

Jurors heard recent closing arguments in Polk County Georgia for both sides of a wrongful death lawsuit filed against a Rockmart nursing home.

A defense attorney for Rockmart Nursing and Rehabilitation Center and it’s parent company, Subacute Services Inc., told jurors and a nearly full courtroom that those caring for 82-year-old Ruby Mae Tyler were “neighbors, people you know” and that this suit filed by Tyler’s daughter, Elizabeth Costlow, was to “strike back at mortality.”
Tyler died April 2008 after being a resident in the nursing home for around three months.
The defense attorney, peppering his closing argument with Biblical phrases and Southern colloquialisms, said Tyler was sick with many illnesses, so sick that she could have been successfully sustained anywhere.
The fact was she was going to die, the attorney said.
“She was going home. She knew it,” he said.
The plaintiffs attorney said Tyler may have been in the last stages of life, but didn’t want or need any help dying.
His argument were the pressure ulcers, which he claimed were rooted in neglect at the nursing home, directly contributed to Tyler’s death.
“It was too much for this poor lady to happen and she passed,” he said.
The attorney said the argument wasn’t that Tyler would die so much that she wasn’t allowed to “die with dignity.The closing argument for the plaintiff didn’t focus as much on a verdict as it did on how much to award the plaintiff.
Plaintiff’s counsel used the amount the defense paid its expert witness, $750 an hour, as the standard.
Under their formula, plaintiff’s counsel asked for approximately $2.65 million in negligence damages and between $3.24 to $9.7 million in punitive damages.
Read more: The Fish Wrap - Jurors to deliberate nursing home case
Jurors to deliberate nursing home case

Nursing Home Neglect alleged in Investigation - Denver Colorado

Commerce City, Colo. -- Following a series of CALL7 Investigative reports, the state health department has fined a troubled nursing home in Commerce City more than $100,000 and forced sweeping changes to the facility's management.
"We saw a pattern of repeated complaints," said Nancy McDonald, division director for Health Facilities at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. "We realized that with the current management they were unable to, or were not adequately prepared to, make the changes necessary to keep everybody safe." In the last year, CALL7 has uncovered repeated complaints of neglect, injuries and death of patients at the Woodridge Park Nursing and Rehabilitation Center


Inadequate Food?
For months, a frequent complaint by families and nursing staff was that residents were refused additional food because of budget constraints.
"They were telling me they couldn't have seconds because we don't have enough food or they didn't prepare enough food," said Cook Supervisor at Woodridge Park, William Santoro. "I kept hearing that we don't have enough food or we didn't cook enough food."
Santoro explained that he remembered making one pan of spaghetti for 90 people -- each was given an ounce and a half. Santoro told Ferrugia he complained and nothing was done, so he quit.

Nursing Home Shake-Up Follows CALL7 Investigation - Denver News Story - KMGH Denver