This high-stakes lawsuit will go down to the wire. German “OT” Ortiz wants $800,000 from the heart surgeon he blames for leaving a 57-inch “guide wire” stretching from his leg to his chest in 2005. The 70-year-old plaintiff claims he’d unknowingly been carrying the foreign object inside his body since it was left there during a 2005 heart operation in which it was used to guide a catheter from his thigh to his chest.
In a country where citizens resort to crowdfunding to pay for their medical bills and politicians can’t agree on the right kind of health care system, a pair of doctors decided that enough was enough. “We both started despising what was going on financially with the patients, cause when you look at the bankruptcy statistics — medical bankruptcies for patients now — it’s egregious,” Dr. Steven Lantier told Yahoo Finance.
Nearly 40 states have laws allowing doctors to say "sorry" to patients for bad diagnoses, procedures and outcomes. Those laws prohibit using the apology as evidence in a malpractice lawsuit. But patients often don't file suits because they don't know they've been injured by a doctor and because lawyers can't afford cost of going to court. Still, botched medical procedures do lead to malpractice suits when big settlements are possible.
Griffin Hospital in Derby recently welcomed the newest members to a council of community members that help the hospital meet its mission for exceptional, person-centered care. Laurel May and Larry Dobitas, both of Trumbull, and Louis Watson of Milford, joined Griffin Hospital’s Patient Family Advisory Council this year.
In a country that had all but eradicated the disease, and had even moved on to helping to eliminate it around the globe, there are new alarm bells about the spread of measles in the United States. He and others, including Anthony Fauci, M.D., the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have attributed the outbreak to reports over the last several years- which have proven to be false- linking vaccines to autism and other conditions. Azar said it’s reversed progress and put lives at risk.
A former University of California Los Angeles physician surrendered to law enforcement Monday after being charged with sexual battery in connection to his medical practice, according to a release from the university. Dr. James Heaps is facing two charges of sexual battery with fraud and one charge of sexual exploitation of a patient. He pleaded not guilty to all three charges.