Medical liens are one of the biggest nightmares for personal injury attorneys. They add cost and complexity to a case as well as delay settlement payments. That’s an undisputed fact. Now, it’s alleged that a hospital is abusing the liens, too:
Silver Cross Hospital for a decade has exploited accident settlements to get higher fees from patients, a class-action lawsuit alleges.
By placing medical liens on personal-injury settlements, the New Lenox-based hospital seeks to force patients to pay higher, out-of-network fees even when Silver Cross has network agreements with the patients' health insurers, the complaint says. Settlement proceeds can’t be distributed until a lien is released by the hospital or declared invalid by a judge.
Silver Cross has placed a lien for $18,000 on an $85,000 settlement won by Brian Falls even though it accepted payment of under $6,000 at the discounted, in-network rate from a subsidiary of Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealth Group, Mr. Falls alleges.
What’s that? I think it’s the appearance of impropriety:
"I understand (the plaintiff's attorneys) would be stunned and upset," Munch said. "I have made disclosures in cases. I certainly should have disclosed it."
Rebecca Aviel, a legal ethics professor at the University of Denver, said it's clear Munch had a responsibility to inform attorneys in the case who likely would have asked him to move the trial to another judge.
"Judges are required to conduct themselves in a way that avoids impropriety or the appearance of impropriety. That's critical because one of the things that's so crucial for our democracy to function, is that people trust the judiciary," she said. "If he doesn't disqualify (himself) I think we have a really clear violation of the code of judicial conduct."
“Bury the lede” or “bury the lead” – it means the same thing: To put the crucial information at the end of a story. And that’s just what Forbes did with a recent story on medical malpractice.
The article checks all the right boxes that an article written by an M.D. about medical malpractice should: Defensive medicine, fear and uncertainty, unpredictability, etc. The author unsurprisingly concludes that we need some sort of legal reform to “fix” the system. But here is the buried lede:
While less than 5 percent of all medical errors lead to a malpractice claim, lengthy claims prolong the legal process, and in some cases, delay what may be just and fair compensation.
Apparently, it’s not whether something walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s whether it bills insurance companies like a duck:
There is tremendous oversight in the operating rooms in hospitals. But in Maryland, some other locations where surgery is done simply don't. Maryland’s Health Secretary, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, acknowledges some clinics where cosmetic surgery procedures are done don’t get licensed or inspected.
In Maryland, he says medspas and plastic surgery clinics that don't bill insurance as “ambulatory surgery centers” aren't overseen like hospitals, even though they may do some of the same procedures.
It’s a legal loophole some consider a fatal flaw in the state’s health system. And the family of a woman who died following a procedure at a Baltimore County medspa is attempting to shed light on the issue. Denise Witherspoon and her family spoke exclusively with ABC2 about the death of their sister, Eula.
In the medical profession, a “never event” is something that should never happen. Doctors have to make judgment calls every day, and sometimes those judgments will be wrong. Every wrong judgment is not medical malpractice. But a “never event” is not a bad judgment call. It’s blatant medical malpractice, no matter how you slice it. And a new study claims it happens 80 times a week:
About 80 times each week, U.S. patients undergoing surgery experience mistakes that safety advocates say never should happen.
The types of errors being made: Surgical instruments such as sponges are unintentionally left behind in the patient; a wrong procedure is performed; a wrong surgical site is operated upon; and surgery is done on the wrong patient altogether.
The study offers a number of disturbing statistics and conclusions. What’s even more disturbing, but not discussed in this article, is the fact that legislatures around the country are trying to find ways to make it harder for patients who were victims of never events to file a medical malpractice lawsuit.
Connie Spears had to have both of her legs amputated after doctors ignored her past history of blood clots and sent her home despite her symptoms of severe leg pain. Despite what to many medical professionals appears to be a clear cut case of medical malpractice, Connie Spears finds no justice in Texas. Why? Because of laws passed in 2003:
The huge tort reform package that Texas lawmakers approved in 2003 capped noneconomic damages that a plaintiff could receive for medical malpractice at $250,000 and set a “willful and wanton” negligence standard — interpreted as intentionally harming the patient — for emergency care. It also required plaintiffs to find a practicing or teaching physician in the same specialty as the defendant to serve as an expert witness and to demonstrate evidence of negligence before a trial. Under the strengthened rules, if plaintiffs fail to produce adequate expert reports within 120 days of filing their cases, they are liable for defendants’ legal fees.
The creation of a “willful and wanton” standard was supposedly a mechanism to prevent frivolous lawsuits from hurting doctors who made the wrong choice in a time of crisis. Instead, it protects doctors who do anything short of purposely hurting their patients.
The real reason Texas passed the tort reform that it did had little to do with any lawsuit crisis in the medical profession. Instead, this law rewarded Republican campaign contributors and financially hurt trial lawyers, which are traditionally a group of Democratic campaign contributors.
Thanks to gerrymandering the Republican majority in Texas is not in danger of disappearing any time soon. And because of that, neither is the oppressive medical malpractice package it put into place ten years ago.
