Waterbury Personal Injury Lawyer - Medical Malpractice

Emergency Room Patients Waiting Longer

James Sabatini — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:05:23 GMT

Patients seeking urgent care in U.S. emergency rooms are waiting longer than in the 1990s, especially people with heart attacks, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday. The longer waits affect insureds and uninsureds equally. They found a quarter of heart attack victims waited 50 minutes or more before seeing a doctor in 2004. Waits for all types of emergency department visits became 36 percent longer between 1997 and 2004, the team at Harvard Medical School reported. The longer waits are being attributed to the fact that emergency room patients are not money makers for the hospitals, thus emergency rooms are being shut down or scaled down.

For more information on this subject, please refer to the section on Medical Malpractice and Negligent Care.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by James Sabatini

Florida Reform Did Not Drop Medical Malpractice Rates

Shannon Weidemann — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:41:00 GMT

Laws were passed in Florida in 2003 to reform the medical malpractice insurance industry. Rates rose 98 percent in some specialization during the time period between 1998 and 2002. Doctors were hoping the reform would lower their medical malpractice rates. A new study has shown that claims have gone down but rates have only decreased slightly. It is hoped that rates will continue to decrease even though insurance companies have posted recored profits.

The largest insurer, Jacksonville-based First Professionals Insurance Co. (NASDAQ: FPIC), asked the state insurance office for an 11.7 percent decrease on top of the 8.5 percent decrease it passed on last year. Its rates would be just below 2003 levels, said President Bob White.
And premiums will continue falling for the next two years, then stabilize as more years of lower claim data are factored into the rate formula, White said.

The new laws capped rewards for pain and suffering at $500,000 in order to help reduce costs. Studies have shown that medical malpractice claims have dropped around the country in the same time period.

If you would like to learn more about medical malpractice, please visit InjuryBoard's Medical Malpractice information page.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Shannon Weidemann

Defibrillator Leads Recalled by Medtronic

Shannon Weidemann — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 16:45:34 GMT

Medtronic has issued a product recall for Sprint Fidelis Defibrillator leads because of possible fractures in the lines. The defibrillator leads have been on the market since 2004 and the FDA did not require human testing before gaining approval. The model was close enough to a previous one to not warrent it. Medtronic did perform short-term testing on humans before seeking FDA approval though.

Before approving the Sprint Fidelis models, the FDA reviewed results from animal tests and extensive engineering "bench" studies, including 400 million repetitions of a bending motion designed to answer questions about the devices' strength, said Megan Moynahan, chief of the FDA branch that oversees defibrillator leads. Because the fracturing issue is "extraordinarily rare," a human clinical trial was unlikely to find it, she said.
There are 235,000 of the recalled items still being used in people. Five people may have died from using the device. The leads are connected to a defibrillator implanted in a person's chest.
If you would lilke to learn more about defective medical devices, please visit InjuryBoard's Medical Devices and Implants information page.
Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Shannon Weidemann