According to research conducted by John Hopkins Medical Center, diagnostic errors do the most harm to patients and result in the most medical malpractice claims and additional expenses. Diagnostic errors can be either a missed diagnosis, a delayed diagnosis or a wrong diagnosis. Some of the most common reasons for diagnostic…
Earlier in the week, we discussed the "never event" of wrong site surgeries. Another never event is patient falls. Patient falls in hospitals, nursing homes and other medical facilities should never happen. In fact, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will typically not reimburse medical facilities for additional medical treatment that is necessitated…
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each day roughly 1 in every 20 hospitalized patients will develop a healthcare-associated infection as a result of receiving medical care. And, that statistic does not include infections acquired at doctor’s offices and long-term care facilities. There are several types of healthcare-acquired infections…
National Patient Safety Week continues and so does our discussion about preventable medical errors. Medical errors are now the third leading cause of death in the United States. Only cancer and heart-disease claim more lives. Accidents, stroke, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease are not even close to the deaths caused by preventable medical…
An estimated 2,080 wrong site surgeries errors occur each year in the United States. The term wrong site surgery actually encompasses several different types of errors that occur in the operating room including wrong site, wrong side, wrong procedure and wrong patient surgeries. Wrong site surgeries are "never events" — meaning they…
In honor of Patient Safety Week, all of our blog posts this week will be related to medical malpractice and patient safety. To start, we want to give you some idea of the size of the problem and then we will examine some of the most common types of preventable medical…
The number of Tennessee health care liability lawsuits (formerly known as medical malpractice lawsuits) remains over 30% lower than it was just five years ago. What follows is a list of the number of medical malpractice lawsuits filed in each of the Tennessee judicial circuits in the one year period…
It happens all too often: a patient wakes up from surgery to be advised all has gone well. But then weeks, months and sometimes years later, the patient starts experiencing symptoms such as pain or vomiting which do not seem to be related to any trauma or illness. Doctors can find no…
Tennessee law requires almost always requires that a medical expert testify that a health care provider improperly treated the patient. This expert must be familiar with the standard of care applicable to the health care provider at the time of the alleged wrong and must explain how the care actually…
Tennessee law requires that appropriate action must be taken to initiate a Tennessee medical malpractice lawsuit (now known as a health care liability action) within one year of the date of the incident that causes an injury. Cases are initiated by serving a formal notice on the persons or entities…