What Attorney Matthew Casey should have said was the plaintiff hoped that the verdict would result in St Luke’s “redoubling its efforts” to help prevent such infections during home care and that extreme awards, such as this one, should make it clear that it is ridiculous for American’s to think that the Affordable Health Care law can be actuarially sound without serious tort reform.
I wonder what a 50 yr old woman with Crohn’s disease’s future earnings would be. I guess she could be a company owner or something, but generally i would assume that she didn’t have that much earning potential left. Maybe it’s a lesser part of the award and the medical payments/pain & suffering are the lion’s share.
The problem with cases like these is that it’s hard to determine an actual dollar amount. Would we be talking about this case if the trial was held Texas? If I’m not mistaken, her maximum award would have been $250k in Texas. Interesting.
A similar thing happend to a family member…he had diabetes and had fallen with minor injury to lower leg and a known history of poor circulation. when dischrged to nursing home, banage was not changed for two days & gangrene set in, requiring subsequent toe amputation that wouldn’t heal ultimately causing sepsis and death shortly after at age 82. It was settled for a pretty small amount.
I see fatality claims settled for far, far less than this. Many times for under $1m, and that includes when the primary provider for the family is killed.
If ever something should be a poster child for tort reform–this is it.
If the hospital pays out the 23 million dollars Attorney Casey will hit the jackpot but the hospital may have to shut down its home care program.
The health system runs on minimal profits and most are run as nonprofits.
If these kind of foolish exorbitant amounts are paid out by ignorant jurors then it is Kaput for the Hospitals as we know today.
Any time anyone gets a hickman catheter you take a risk of potential infection.The risks exist for every invasive procedure.
Let Nationalised health care come in then people will realise you now have to sue Uncle Sam who is broke and will only pay you with IOU’s
People like attornre Casey must be ashamed of gloating over this foolish verdict and will rue killing the goose which lays a golden egg.
Just like all the manufacturing jobs have gone secondary to unreasonable litigation and unions so will be the day of jackpot payouts
The problem here is that we make healthcare provider(s) 100% at risk for all bad outcomes. It isn’t that the plaintiff in this case doesn’t deserve to receive compensation of some type. However, we also want people to go into nursing and to become doctors. The average salary for a primary care doctor is $120K to $140K according to the AMA. Why would any doctor or nurse go through the pain that it takes to get into their profession only to be subjected to a $23Million Dollar claim…a claim that far exceeds their malpractice limits, threatens their home, their families and their future? The amount of the liability which healthcare providers are facing is completely disproportionate any upside benefit of being in the profession. Who else gets up every day and faces this level of liability?
It doesn’t sound like this was a bad outcome, but rather plain old negligence. The size of the award is rather mind-boggling though, but the article doesn’t break it down into expenses/lost earnings/pain and suffering.
I am a home health nurse and I hear all of your comments about neglect. You have no idea how hard it is going out to these homes and the stress you are under. A person can “Go bad” over night when you are not even there. Sometimes you only go to a pts home three times a week and a infection can start in that short peroid of time, by the time you get a order, take the specimen, get the results the infection has grown. This IS what our medical system has come to.
If that poor woman lived in VA she would have a med mal cap of under $2,000,000 which is terribly inadequate for such a case.
What Attorney Matthew Casey should have said was the plaintiff hoped that the verdict would result in St Luke’s “redoubling its efforts” to help prevent such infections during home care and that extreme awards, such as this one, should make it clear that it is ridiculous for American’s to think that the Affordable Health Care law can be actuarially sound without serious tort reform.
I wonder what a 50 yr old woman with Crohn’s disease’s future earnings would be. I guess she could be a company owner or something, but generally i would assume that she didn’t have that much earning potential left. Maybe it’s a lesser part of the award and the medical payments/pain & suffering are the lion’s share.
I think St Luke’s will carefully review the costs of providing home health care and decide whether it is fiscally capable of continuing the program.
The problem with cases like these is that it’s hard to determine an actual dollar amount. Would we be talking about this case if the trial was held Texas? If I’m not mistaken, her maximum award would have been $250k in Texas. Interesting.
D Berry
http:///www.txinsurancepro.com/dallas-business-insurance
Maximum pain and suffering reward would be 250K but the indemnification would be separate.
A similar thing happend to a family member…he had diabetes and had fallen with minor injury to lower leg and a known history of poor circulation. when dischrged to nursing home, banage was not changed for two days & gangrene set in, requiring subsequent toe amputation that wouldn’t heal ultimately causing sepsis and death shortly after at age 82. It was settled for a pretty small amount.
$23m?
Really?
I see fatality claims settled for far, far less than this. Many times for under $1m, and that includes when the primary provider for the family is killed.
If ever something should be a poster child for tort reform–this is it.
In other words, it would have been better if the patient had croaked.
That seems a rather intentionally ignorant thing to say.
I agree. He should have said, “cheaper”.
If the hospital pays out the 23 million dollars Attorney Casey will hit the jackpot but the hospital may have to shut down its home care program.
The health system runs on minimal profits and most are run as nonprofits.
If these kind of foolish exorbitant amounts are paid out by ignorant jurors then it is Kaput for the Hospitals as we know today.
Any time anyone gets a hickman catheter you take a risk of potential infection.The risks exist for every invasive procedure.
Let Nationalised health care come in then people will realise you now have to sue Uncle Sam who is broke and will only pay you with IOU’s
People like attornre Casey must be ashamed of gloating over this foolish verdict and will rue killing the goose which lays a golden egg.
Just like all the manufacturing jobs have gone secondary to unreasonable litigation and unions so will be the day of jackpot payouts
The problem here is that we make healthcare provider(s) 100% at risk for all bad outcomes. It isn’t that the plaintiff in this case doesn’t deserve to receive compensation of some type. However, we also want people to go into nursing and to become doctors. The average salary for a primary care doctor is $120K to $140K according to the AMA. Why would any doctor or nurse go through the pain that it takes to get into their profession only to be subjected to a $23Million Dollar claim…a claim that far exceeds their malpractice limits, threatens their home, their families and their future? The amount of the liability which healthcare providers are facing is completely disproportionate any upside benefit of being in the profession. Who else gets up every day and faces this level of liability?
It doesn’t sound like this was a bad outcome, but rather plain old negligence. The size of the award is rather mind-boggling though, but the article doesn’t break it down into expenses/lost earnings/pain and suffering.
I am a home health nurse and I hear all of your comments about neglect. You have no idea how hard it is going out to these homes and the stress you are under. A person can “Go bad” over night when you are not even there. Sometimes you only go to a pts home three times a week and a infection can start in that short peroid of time, by the time you get a order, take the specimen, get the results the infection has grown. This IS what our medical system has come to.
Nobody here has used the word neglect.
In my experience juries only award sums this high when the defendant (and/or the defendant’s attorney or expert) enrages the jury.
I wonder if whether there were any offers to settle?