Providence Medical Malpractice Law Blog

Medical professionals and hospitals have a legal obligation to their patients to comply with appropriate safety standards while also refraining from overcharging patients. This means that unnecessary medical procedures should not be performed because they could result in excessive medical bills for patients in Rhode Island or in any other state. However, one hospital and a medical doctor have recently been accused of doing just that when they were sued by 21 patients for medical malpractice and hospital negligence.

Suspicions of something wrong began to surface following a federal investigation which revealed that a specific doctor working in the hospital may have placed stents in the arteries of patients when there was no medical need to do so. The 2010 investigation discovered that this may have happened in hundreds of cases during the span of 2007 and 2009. This prompted the plaintiffs to file a medical malpractice lawsuit against the hospital and the doctor in April 2013.

There are thousands of abnormal birth deliveries in the country each year. In Rhode Island and other states, birth injuries to newborn babies caused by the negligence of a doctor or hospital staff will result in an award of damages in a medical malpractice case. The standard of care to be decided in these cases is whether the health care provider's services fell below the minimum required care normally expected of a professional under those circumstances.

In the reported case, a jury awarded $2.1 million to the mother of a seven-year-old female who suffered birth injuries that are referred to as Erb's palsy. The girl sustained permanent nerve injury to the neck and has limited mobility in her left arm. The award was entered against a hospital, doctors' offices and a certified nurse midwife, all located in Cooperstown, New York.

Many Rhode Island residents fear going to the dentist, and some postpone such visits until dental pain forces them to seek medical attention. However, few people actually fear for their lives while in the dental chair; most simply find dental procedures to be uncomfortable. One recently settled brain injury case provides a different view on the risks associated with dental care, and may give many pause before undergoing dental surgery.

The case centers on the death of a 17-year-old high school student that took place in 2011. The teen was placed under anesthesia for a routine wisdom tooth surgery, but sustained a serious brain injury when her oxygen supply was cut off. The resulting medical malpractice suit claimed that the surgeon, anesthesiologist and other medical practitioners involved in the procedure failed to revive the girl when her heart rate slowed.

In 2011, new rules went into effect to shorten the number of hours first-year resident doctors could work in a hospital. The rules decreased the number of hours a resident could work during a shift from 30 to 16 in an effort to reduce fatigue and medical errors made by residents.

Unfortunately, a new study found that the reduction in hours has not improved patient safety. The study found that the reduction in residents' hours decreases the amount of time they have to train, which can lead to more medical errors and risks for hospital patients.