Medical Malpractice South Carolina Blog

A decade after her son died in a South Carolina hospital, Helen Haskell is still advocating for patient safety.

Her son was Lewis Blackman, a 15-year-old boy who went into the hospital for elective surgery to correct a heart defect. He died after medical staff failed to respond to a perforated ulcer and internal bleeding caused by a medication.

Medication errors are bad enough. But not responding to a patient clearly in distress is unconscionable.

In 2005, the South Carolina legislature passed patient safety legislation mandating that hospital patients must be given information on how to contact a doctor or get other help. The Lewis Blackman Patient Safety Act is still on the books in South Carolina.

Today, Lewis' mother, Helen Haskell, is taking her message of patient advocacy to other states as well. She has founded a nonprofit group called Mothers Against Medical Error to help spread her message.

Haskell encourages hospital patients to have a survival plan to navigate the healthcare system. She believes that this system is still plagued with common errors and preventable bad outcomes.

It shouldn't matter what day of the week that someone receives medical care. The standard of care that doctors and nurses must meet doesn't go down, just because it's the weekend.

Recent research, however, reveals some troubling data. A large study done in Britain found that the likelihood of patients dying is higher if they are admitted to the hospital over the weekend than it is for those admitted during the middle days of the week.

Similar reports have appeared in America as well. On both sides of the Atlantic, it seems that patients are at higher risk of emergency room errors or other forms of medical malpractice when admitted on weekends or during holidays.

The British study was done by researchers from University College, London. They analyzed all admissions in England to National Health Service Hospitals during 2009-10. This involved a total of 14 million admissions, either to the ER or through a planned admission.

The research found that higher death rates occurred for patients who were admitted on weekends. These rates were lower for people who were already hospitalized prior to a weekend.

One in seven. According to a new report by federal investigators, that is how often hospital employees both recognize and report errors and other adverse events that injure Medicare patients.

The figure is shockingly high. It raises troubling questions about the extent of medical malpractice in South Carolina and across the country.

The report was overseen by Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general of the of Health and Human Services department. He noted that some of the most serious adverse events, including many that led to patient deaths, were not reported at all.

Even for those injuries that are reported, hospitals often fail to take action to change the practices that caused them. The HHS inspector general's report was based on a review by independent doctors of the patient records of Medicare patients.

The investigators performed detailed reviews of 293 cases of patient harm. Only 40 of those cases had been reported to hospital managers. Hospitals investigated 28 of those, but only five cases led to changes in policies or procedures.

Researchers are starting to understand just how critical it is after birth for premature babies to receive an adequate supply of oxygen. Without a proper supply of oxygen to the "white matter" in the brain, the brain's development can be severely damaged. Indeed, the brain can be damaged so badly that it never really catches up.

Sometimes, the reason for this oxygen deprivation resulting in birth injuries is medical malpractice.

Nationally, the number of babies who are born weighing less than 3.3 pounds is over 60,000. In the past, many babies born that small died. Today, however, due to advances in neonatal care, most of them survive.

But the chance of brain damage in premature babies who survive is significant. Many of them suffer from cerebral palsy or epilepsy. Others struggle with such behavioral disorders as ADHD.

According to research presented at a recent meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, the babies who have the highest risk of this type of brain damage are those who were born prematurely - with as little as six months gestation in the mother's womb.

Medical malpractice is caused by many factors in the United States. Individual failures, such as a doctor or nurse not washing hands before contact with patients, are one source of the larger problem.

The larger problem also involves a healthcare system that, compared to other developed countries, too often fragments patient care. A new study by the Commonwealth Fund shows that the poor coordination of care leads to poor medical outcomes - many of which involve medical negligence

In other industrialized countries, patients generally have better access than in the U.S. to what the research study calls "medical homes." A medical home is a place where medical professionals who know their patients' medical histories are readily accessible to coordinate care.

This coordinating role becomes particularly important when a patient requires complex treatment.

Cancer continues to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. In 2011 alone, the American Cancer Society estimates there will be over 500,000 cancer deaths.

With so many deaths, early detection is crucial. That is why failure to diagnose cancer can be a form of medical malpractice.

But that doesn't mean that medical professionals should test people too often for cancer, either. After all, excessive cancer tests carry their own risks.

What are those risks? For starters, it's a tremendous source of potential anxiety, to be subjected to a cancer screening. Unnecessary tests can also beget still more unnecessary tests and treatments that both waste money and can lead to unpredictable health complications, especially among the elderly.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent medical services group, sets guidelines for how often cancer screenings should occur. Though these guidelines are usually widely reported in the press, their details are often ignored by healthcare providers.

It's widely known that prescription drug dosage errors are a major problem. Attempts to address the causes of medication errors have not been vigorous enough. Some medical providers and pharmacies have tried to cut down on errors by using more electronic records, rather than doctors' notoriously scratchy signatures. Much more, however, remains to be done.

There is also a major problem now with drug shortages.CBS News reported that supplies of over 200 drugs are running short. More than 8 of every 10 hospitals surveyed say the shortages have resulted in delays in treatment. These delays may have cost at least 15 people their lives.

The shortages include medications used in cancer treatment and in anesthesia, as well as others needed for critical care.

The Food and Drug Administration convened a meeting this week to discuss the problem.

Sleep deprivation leads to drastically diminished performance. The evidence keeps coming in on that subject. A fatigued motor vehicle driver is a more dangerous driver, more prone to errors. The same is true of fatigued physicians. Doctors who are short on sleep are more likely to make mistakes and commit medical malpractice.

This issue has been widely known for at least forty years, since the New England Journal of Medicine published a study showing that doctors who were short on sleep made double the number of errors reading electrocardiograms as doctors who were properly rested.

Today, there are some limits on the hours that medical residents can work. Under new rules that took effect in July, medical school graduates beginning their internships are limited to shifts of 16 hours. But after that first year, residents in second or subsequent years are still allowed to work shifts of up to 28-hours with practically no sleep.

This heroic, Herculean task is beyond the reach of mere mortals. Abundant evidence shows that it creates an environment in which medical errors can happen all too easily.