Articles related to MEDICAL ERRORS

An Idaho man received $13.5 million after a nearby hospital missed his stroke diagnosis by more than 12 hours. The jury’s finding that the emergency physician engaged in “reckless misconduct” allowed this case to exceed the usual Idaho cap on judgments for cases of this nature of $400,000.00.

Oncologists were mentioned in two important specialist areas in CMS’ examination of inappropriate payments made to Part B providers, with the dismal outcomes as follows: Four hundred (400) claims for oncology/hematology were examined; of these, 60.9% lacked sufficient supporting paperwork, 31.9% had inaccurate coding, and the remaining cases had neither, along with no other issues. Given these findings, CMS projects $146 million in erroneous payments. In medical oncology, 147 claims were analyzed; 54.5% had no documentation and 37.7% had inaccurate coding, with the balance (7.9%) having insufficient documentation. According to CMS data, the projected overpayments for this claim sample are $12.9 million.

As originally reported in the Journal of Addiction Medicine, use of the animal tranquilizer xylazine has now been seen in more than 23 states in the US. Finding the drug in a patient sample should prompt the physician to look for early signs of tissue infection and other symptoms.

“There have been a handful of cases which have now held, for one reason or another, that a third party can pursue a claim against a health care practitioner if they were injured as a result of that health care practitioner’s negligence to his or her own patient. What does this mean practically speaking? It opens the door for more lawsuits, lawsuits from people who were never your patient, but who may be impacted by a prescribing decision you make for your patient.”