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Archive for the ‘Kansas Medical Malpractice’ Category

Today’s 300th Consecutive Daily Blog Posting For MedicalMalpracticeLawyers.com

Thursday, December 29th, 2011

Today, MedicalMalpracticeLawyers.com is proud to celebrate its 300th consecutive daily blog posting. Over the course of 299 postings, we have explored numerous medical malpractice topics, including states’ medical malpractice laws, states’ statistics regarding medical malpractice claims, results of medical malpractice jury verdicts in various states, and relevant and timely medical information useful to our readers.

Our medical malpractice research over the last 10 months has revealed the constant assault on the rights of medical malpractice victims to receive fair and adequate compensation for their losses that has drastically, unfairly, and indiscriminately reduced the compensation received by them for their permanent, painful, and debilitating injuries and losses.

Our blog has examined the well-financed and highly-organized efforts of the health care industry promoting “tort reform” legislation drafted on its behalf by politically-connected, highly-paid lobbyists who employ public fear tactics (for example, telling patients that their doctors will need to give up their medical practices due to too high medical malpractice insurance premiums or preaching the often-recited but rarely-supported mantra about “frivolous” medical malpractice lawsuits) to wage a war that they inappropriately call ”tort reform” (“reform” implies that something was wrong to begin with). Their high-powered tactics are intended to elevate the financial interests of the very few doctors, hospitals, and other medical care providers who fail to provide the medical care that their peers have established as the bare minimum required level of medical care that should have been provided under the circumstances, over the long-established legal and moral rights of the innocent victims of negligence to be fairly and adequately compensated for their injuries and losses caused solely by the wrongdoing of others.

We have tried to bring to light the processes of certain federal agencies, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), that affect the health of our citizens, such as the federal drug-approval process that can be influenced by political considerations and the financial power held by massive drug manufacturers. We have discussed the objective findings of studies undertaken by independent federal government organizations such as the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that were relevant to medical malpractice issues, to help our readers determine for themselves the unbiased, honest information that will help them form their own opinions on medical malpractice issues relevant to their lives.

While our name, MedicalMalpracticeLawyers.com, and our website  are dedicated to helping the innocent victims of medical malpractice be connected with medical malpractice lawyers in their local area throughout the United States who may be able and willing to investigate their possible medical malpractice claims for them and represent them in their medical malpractice case, if appropriate, we have always provided the source of our information and the link to our source in our blogs so that our readers can read for themselves the original source information.

MedicalMalpracticeLawyers.com will continue to seek out and explore interesting and useful medical malpractice information for our future blogs. If you have information or a request for information regarding medical malpractice issues important to you, please contact us with your information or your request so that we can provide the information to our blog readers.

We wish all of you the best of health, happiness, and enjoyment of life for the New Year!

Please visit our website  or call us toll free (800-295-3959) if we can assist you.

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One Of The Largest Kansas Medical Malpractice Verdicts

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

Kansas is known to be one of the most conservative jurisdictions for jury verdicts in medical malpractice cases (when we say “conservative,” we mean low jury verdicts). However, there is one Kansas medical malpractice verdict that stands out from the rest.

In the case MLM, by and through Midwest Trust Co. of Missouri Inc., conservator v. Lisa Gard, M.D., decided on March 13, 2009, a Kansas jury awarded $12.1 million ($11 million for future medical expenses, $800,000 for future economic losses, and $300,000 for past noneconomic damages) for a then 8-year-old girl who presented to a local hospital emergency department in 2006 with complaints of’ severe neck pain. pain in her arm, and numbness and tingling in both of her hands and her feet. The medical malpractice lawsuit claimed that the little girl was treated negligently in the emergency department and that the medical negligence resulted in the girl ending up a quadriplegic as a result of medical malpractice.

During the first emergency department visit, the emergency department doctor did a full physical examination that she determined to be normal. Nonetheless, the doctor performed a rapid strep test that was positive and, based upon the positive result, she diagnosed streptococcal pharyngitis. The doctor discharged the child home in the care of her parents, with pain medication and antibiotics to fight the strep infection.

The girl’s father brought her back to the emergency department about a day-and-a-half later because of her progressing weakness and paralysis. She was flown to a larger regional hospital where her serious medical condition was diagnosed: she had a rare congenital spinal cord defect known as an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) that had hemorrhaged and was causing spinal cord compression. Surgery was performed to remove the AVM but the delay in operating allegedly caused permanent spinal cord damage resulting in quadriplegia.

The resulting medical malpractice claim against the first emergency department doctor and the first hospital alleged the child’s neurological condition should have been properly assessed to rule out a neurological problem, that an appropriate neurological consultation should have been obtained, that the girl should have been transferred to a hospital with more appropriate pediatric emergency resources, and that the misdiagnosis led to the unnecessary delay in diagnosing the hemorrhaging AVM.

The defense argued to the jury that the girl and her parents failed to provide accurate information regarding the child’s symptoms, that the diagnosis of streptococcal pharyngitis as the cause of the neck pain was reasonable, that an earlier transfer to another hospital would not have made a difference in the outcome, that her life expectancy was not as long as the plaintiff’s experts testified (thereby reducing the cost of future medical care), and that the child could be independent and employable (thereby reducing the future economic loss claim).

The jury sided with the plaintiff and against the defendants.

Source

If a medical provider in Kansas or in another U.S. state was negligent and the medical negligence caused injuries and losses, a medical malpractice attorney may be able to help in bringing a claim for medical malpractice damages. Visit our website or telephone us toll free at 800-295-3959 to be connected with medical malpractice lawyers in your state who may be able to help you with your medical malpractice claim.

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