Based Upon Study of 31,567 Patients In the October 26, 2006 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, 31,567 asymptomatic persons at risk for lung cancer (such as smokers or past-smokers) were screened annually for the disease using low-dose CT imaging. The results?: 484 participants were diagnosed with lung cancer, and, of those, 412
Read More

Missed and Delayed Diagnoses Studied in the Ambulatory Care Setting The most common errors made in ambulatory care settings involve a missed diagnosis of cancer. A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine on October 3, 2006 found that, in a review of 181 closed malpractice claims, that the most common errors made in
Read More

Supreme Court Special Committee Agrees on Questions to Be Asked in All Cases There has not been much by way of significant medical malpractice case law since my last blog entry, so I thought I would report on the recent approval by the Supreme Court of standard questions (voir dire) to be asked in all
Read More

Failure to Do So Can Result in Civil Liability to Persons Who Later Contract the HIV Virus from the Patient “We now hold that a health care provider who orders an HIV test for a patient has a duty to take reasonable measures to notify that patient of the results of the test,” says the
Read More

Records Not Kept with the Patient’s Chart Very often, hospitals maintain records dealing with patient care that are not part of the patient’s chart. The ‘Narcotic Administration Record’ discussed in the recent decision of Hein v. Community Medical Center [8-9-06] is a good example. There, an issue arose as to whether one of the patient’s
Read More