New Jersey Accident and Injury Law Blog : New Jersey Injury Lawyer & Attorney : The Grossman Law Firm : Serving Monmouth County, Bergen County

Unclean and unsanitary conditions in hospitals are a factor in most of the infections picked up by patients in these hospitals, and the medical malpractice lawsuits arising from these. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about a million people every year contract an infection in a hospital. These infections may be minor enough to leave a person with nothing more than rashes, and may be as severe as an attack by flesh-eating bacteria.

For those of us who knew that unhygienic conditions in hospitals are a fact, comes a survey that shows we need to be a lot more afraid of these unsanitary conditions than we are right now. The survey was conducted by Consumer Reports, and includes responses by both patients and nurses. Consumers Reports surveyed 731 nurses assigned to operating rooms, emergency rooms etc this year. Last year, more than 13,540 readers were also polled about their or a family member's hospital stay, the previous year.

• About 4 percent of patients reported that they witnessed cleanliness issues, while 28 percent of nurses reported the same.
• Five percent of patients reported that staff sometimes failed to wash their hands before attending to a patient, compared to 26 percent of nurses.
• 13 percent of patients believed that there was improper coordination of care, compared to 38 percent of nurses.

Nurses advise patients to be involved in their medical care, right from the time they decide on a  hospital.

• Choose your hospital wisely. If you are insured, get a list of hospitals, physicians and specialists who are included in your plan, and make a choice that suits your medical needs best. .
• Maintain an updated list of all the details that your hospital may need, including medications you are currently taking, any dietary supplements and over-the-counter drugs, and keep this list in your handbag or wallet. If you suffer from chronic conditions, take a summary of your symptoms and treatment history that includes all details, so you can fill out the admission form properly.
• Take along a family member to speak for you if you are too sick to do so. This person can speak with doctors on your behalf, and discuss treatment options. This helps coordinate care, and makes the process more time efficient.
• Ask your nurse to clean their hand in front of you before they attend to you.
• Check your medications before you take them. Medication errors are one of the leading causes of medical injuries
• Plan your discharge. Make sure you understand your medication schedule and other details. Many hospitals rank low for patient discharge instructions. If you're not clear about your own care after you leave the hospital, it could increase your chances of having to rush back to hospital with complications.

Scott Grossman is a Bergen County medical malpractice lawyer, representing victims of negligence by health care professionals in Bergen, Monmouth, Ocean and Passaic Counties, and across New Jersey.

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A report in Bloomberg effectively illustrates the point that medical malpractice lawyers have supported all along - that controlling malpractice premiums could be done more successfully by cracking down on errant doctors, making it harder for them to practice their brand of medicine.

The report gives the example of a Los Angeles surgeon who has lost two medical malpractice claims, and has had his privileges at the Western Medical Center of Santa Ana suspended, but continues to perform surgeries at another facility. The Medical Board of California has not found it necessary to suspend his license even though it is aware of the two malpractice cases amounting to $528,552 that he lost, as well as the little issue at Western Medical Center.

According to the report, the National Practitioner Data Bank which acts as a bad-doctor-database has only received reports of errant doctors from half of the country's hospitals. When a hospital suspends a doctor's privileges for a minimum of 31 days, it is required to report this to the data bank. However, hospitals seem to be getting around that rule by only imposing a 30-day suspension on a doctor or by labeling such suspensions "a leave of absence." This simply makes a mockery of the rule. Instead, doctors like the Los Angeles neurosurgeon in the Bloomberg story, continue to be able to practice in other hospitals as if nothing had ever happened.

It's this kind of "malpractice" that must be stopped if we are to see any lowering of the malpractice premiums that doctors like to complain about. When such doctors are allowed to practice and patients suffer injuries, they have no choice, but to consult with a medical malpractice attorney.

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It's one of a patient's worst medical malpractice nightmares - a New Jersey doctor, whose clinic was allegedly the source of a hepatitis B epidemic which has already had five of his patients testing positive for the disease. Now, state regulators have indefinitely suspended the medical license of Doctor Parvez Dara.

Health inspectors have described the conditions at Dr. Dara's Toms River office, including blood stains on the floor of the room where the doctor conducted chemotherapy treatments. Inspectors found medication vials left open, and blood inside a bin used to store blood veils. They also found saline and gauze that had not been sterilized. Earlier, health officials had advised approximately 3,000 of Dara's patents to be tested for hepatitis B, after five cancer patients who were undergoing treatment under him, contracted the diseases. Two of his patients were confirmed to have hepatitis B in February, and three others tested positive later.  None of the five patients had any other risk factors for hepatitis B.

Attorneys for Dara insisted that there was no evidence linking him with the Hepatitis infection.  They also argued that the five patients who contracted Hepatitis B were treated at the same hospital, and could have contracted the infection there. However, the hospital was ruled out as the source of the contamination. Back in 2002, Dara paid $56,000 in fines for health code violations.

Hepatitis B is a viral infection that can lead to chronic liver disease, cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer. It's up to 100 times more infectious than the HIV virus.  Infected blood is one of the most common modes of transmission.

Medical Malpractice Lawyers

You shouldn't have to worry about contracting a deadly disease when you walk into your doctor's office for treatment. Unfortunately, the threat of being held accountable for errors and negligence by medical malpractice lawyers is often the only thing that coaxes health care professionals to carry out their responsibilities with care.

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As a Bergen and Monmouth County medical malpractice lawyer, I am aware of  per se negligence or what is referred to in the legal community as res ipsa loquitur type of negligence by doctors or other staff in hospitals. So, it comes as a relief to know that many of these types of obvious errors are not only preventable, but also easily preventable.

According to this news report that relies on a study on the effects of using checklists to go though pre and post surgery routines, post surgery death rates in hospitals can be dramatically reduced if surgeons and other staff in the surgical theater actually use a simple checklist as a guideline of sorts. The checklist, that's been designed by the World Health Organization includes 19 points, including such sweet and simple gems like

• Mark the area or body part to be operated with a pen.
• Make sure that you have the right patient on the table. Ask his name.
• After the surgery, make sure that you haven’t left needles, sponges or other calling cards behind in the patient's body.

Hardly rocket scientist stuff, but according to the study that was conducted across a total of eight international cities, the effects of using a checklist like this reduces post surgery hospital deaths by close to 50 per cent. Post surgery complications dropped by nearly one third.

The results of the study have been encouraging enough for a number of countries, including Britain, to include these steps in a checklist that they will make mandatory in their hospitals. To be fair, American facilities already do use some of these steps as part of their own surgery checklist, and the Joint Commission, a body that's responsible for accrediting hospitals has said that it will consider including more of the steps on the checklist in American operating rooms.

People use checklists to ensure that a job goes smoothly all the time - from a mother who makes a list of all things to pack before a long family trip, to the pilot who ticks off from a list before he prepares for take off, people make use of checklists to make sure that everything goes as smoothly as planned. So it makes sense that patients would be safer when doctors operate with a checklist.

This study only corroborates what those of us who work in the medical malpractice field have known all along – that many post surgery complications, medical injuries and deaths in fact can be reduced.    

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