In Fair Oaks, a suburb of Sacramento, a cardiologist is being accused of negligence by the Medical Board of California.
The board, in an accusation filed by the state attorney general’s office, is asking for dicipline that could end in the doctors license being suspended or even revoked in a case of alleged medical malpractice
The board alleges that the doctor misinterpreted a test, mishandled a follow-up exam, and failed to recognize that a patient needed timely care.
“Medical malpractice is professional negligence by act or omission by a health care provider in which care provided deviates from accepted standards of practice in the medical community and causes injury to the patient.” That is one definition (Wikipedia) of medical malpractice.
Here at the Law Office of Moseley Collins (Sacramento, California), we see and understand the personal suffering caused by medical malpractice.
We see the results of medical malpractice in the victims of medical malpractice. We see the victim’s suffering and the often overlooked victim’s family and the suffering of the victims loved ones.
On Tuesday, Stephen Sheldon received notification that his medical license was suspended by the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners. Dr. Sheldon practiced medicine in Grass Valley, a small community east of Sacramento, California.
He was convicted on fraud charges last month. He had been accused of endangering patients by injecting them with fake Botox.
Sheldon has been the target of several Healthline 3 investigative stories. His wife, who handled business affairs, was also convicted. For more information: see NEWS 3 KVBC news article (http://www.kvbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=9445604&nav=15MUCBSd), December 2, 2008.
Yes, unfortunately medical malpractice does happen and it is not always happening to the other guy. In this case, it seems that money took priority over health.
Here’s another example: “She put these women’s lives in serious danger”. Jury selection is set in Los Angeles for a woman accused of posing as a doctor and performing illegal abortions (more charges are also pending in San Diego).
Jury selection is scheduled to begin in Los Angeles on December 1 in the trial of Bertha Bugarin, longtime operator of Clinica Medica para la Mujer de Hoy, a chain of Southern California abortion clinics with the same or a similar name that for years targeted poor Hispanic women in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties. Bugarin is charged with 18 felony counts of performing abortions without a medical license. If convicted, she faces more than 15 years in prison.
California Hospitals have to start cleaning up their act, now that they are being reported for ‘adverse events’. From August 2007 to May 2008 California Hospitals have had 41 different situations where doctors preformed surgery on the wrong body part or the wrong patient. They also discovered that foreign objects were left in a surgical patient 145 different times.
According to medicalmalpractice.com:
Fewer than one-half of 1% of the nation’s doctorhttp://www.medicalmalpractice.com/National-Medical-Malpractice-Facts.cfms face any serious state sanctions each year. 2,696 total serious disciplinary actions a year, the number state medical boards took in 1999, is a pittance compared to the volume of injury and death of patients caused by negligence of doctors. A recent study by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences estimated that as many as 98,000 patients may be killed each year in hospitals alone as a result of medical errors. Earlier studies also found that this was a serious national problem.
A young mother in Canada has suffered tremendously due to medical malpractice, specifically neglect from her treating doctors and nurses. Jennie, a 27-year-old mother of a three-year-old and three-month-old, injured her back about five weeks ago. She was taken by an ambulance to the emergency room at a Toronto hospital where a CT scan showed she had an enlarged disc. Rather than treat the problem, the doctors gave Jennie some anti-inflammatorys and pain killers, and sent her home.
Jennie’s pain continued. Soon she began feeling numbness in her lower extremities. Her family doctor told her she needed to return to the hospital and get an MRI. Jennie went to a different hospital this time but they did not have the time to see her. She was transferred to yet another hospital where they gave her an MRI and, due to the alarming results, sent her into an emergency surgery.
Still her injury grew worse. All it was was a herniated disc, a very treatable condition, but due to the lack of care she received from her doctors, it slipped farther and farther down her spine and damaged a bundle of nerves. As she recovered from the surgery in the hospital, Jennie and her husband grew alarmed at the black color that was spreading around the surgery site. The nurses she informed did nothing to fix, change, or alert anyone else of the discoloration. Within days Jennie had to undergo another surgery to remove the black tissue.
Heart disease is the number one killer of Americans today. In the United States, one-fourth of all Americans have heart disease, accounting for about 64 million people. In our home of Sacramento, California, about 450,000 people suffer from heart disease. Each year, about 7 million people will go to the hospital complaining of symptoms associated with heart attack. Each minute, one person will die from a heart attack. Every 20 seconds, one person suffers from a heart attack.
These numbers are truly staggering. Heart disease and heart attacks are a huge concern for the United States. One of the most vital things for a person to do is go to the hospital immediately when showing symptoms of a heart attack. Some common symptoms of a heart attack are: unusual shortness of breath, chest pain (tightness, squeezing, pressure), nausea and vomiting, cold sweats, and pain in other upper areas of the body.
Heart attacks are one of the top five misdiagnosed diseases in terms of dollar awards. Misdiagnosis of heart attacks can often happen in atypical circumstances. The person may not have the most common signs of heart attack, such as severe chest pain, or they may not fit the typical mold a heart attack victim, for example a younger individual. Because the outward signs do not show through, some doctors may forgo the necessary tests and procedures.
Today I would like to speak to you about a case that’s been on my mind for the past days. A doctor is being charged with “inadequate, irresponsible, inappropriate and sub-standard care” for his delivery of a baby. The result of his negligence caused the baby undue stress and subsequently was born with a severe brain injury. You can imagine how the parents must feel in such a situation.
The article reads that the mother was having a difficult delivery when the doctor took over. The doctor tried to deliver the baby via suction cap six times when the standard is only three. From here on, the doctor attempted to deliver the baby using forceps and then finally, gave the mother a cesarean which left her obliged to a long recovery period.
A representative of the General Medial Council of the UK stated that the doctor “should have carried out the operation after the third attempt at suction failed”. It is not understandable why he chose not to do so. This seems to indicate the there is an intention to take action against the doctor’s negligent actions.
I read an article today about a woman not far from our Sacramento home in Modesto, CA who underwent a triple bypass surgery. Not to make the paining surgery any easier, upon waking, the woman discovered a serious accident; the surgeon had conducted the operation using a different patient’s angiogram films!
Startling, shocking and unusual? Startling and shocking, yes, especially to the nature of the surgery. But unusual may not be the appropriate word to use. Hospital mistakes in Sacramento and California are actually more common than you think. As the article states:
“The Institute for Healthcare Improvement, which has done leading research on medical mistakes, estimates up to 98,000 people a year die from medical errors that occur in hospitals, more than the annual deaths from auto accidents, breast cancer or AIDS. Many more patients are harmed.”
Personal Injury Lawyer Blog