Source: https://www.faraci.com/category/medical-malpractice/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 01:37:57+00:00

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Many people each year are injured or die as a result of medical errors. Medical malpractice is when a doctor makes a medical mistake that causes injury to the patient.
A medical mistake is when a doctor fails to use reasonable care under the circumstances and does something that another reasonably prudent doctor would not do under the same circumstances. This is referred to as standards of care that doctors must follow.
Many medical malpractice claims relate to injuries caused by a failure to properly diagnose and treat a medical condition, surgery, birth related injuries to the mom and the baby, and medications.
So, is there anything a patient or a patient’s caregiver can do to try to avoid being the victim of a medical error or medical malpractice?
Yes – you have to be your own advocate for either yourself or your loved one. Being your own patient advocate is an important step in trying to prevent medical errors.
Speaking with and questioning doctors and healthcare providers can be intimidating, but it also can be very helpful for both you and the healthcare provider to fully understand what is going on. Make sure you tell the healthcare provider all of your complaints/symptoms in a clear manner. If you feel there is a problem or have a concern, speak up and ask the healthcare provider about it. Doing this can help prevent medical errors.
Do your own research online and write your questions down so you do not forget them. Take notes on what the doctors or healthcare providers tell you. Consider taking a family member or friend with you to important healthcare visits. They may help you remember what the healthcare provider said and ask important questions you might not have considered.
Always follow-up with the healthcare provider and ask about lab results and diagnostic imaging results. Do not just think no news is good news.
When a family member or loved one is in the hospital, the hospital may have a Patient Advocate or a Hospital Representative available to help if you have any questions or concerns. Take advantage of that if you feel you should.
As a patient, it is important to trust your doctor and healthcare providers. You do not have to trust blindly, though. Research your doctor online and see what other patients think of the healthcare provider.
In New York State, information about your doctor may be found at the New York State Physician Profile or at the Department of Health Office of Professional Medical Conduct.
You can also research information about hospitals here, and nursing homes at this link.
These are just a few of the ways you can be an effective advocate for yourself or loved ones. Trust your instincts, ask questions, and speak up if you still have concerns. This will not only help you better understand your own health, but it may also help prevent medical errors.
Jennifer L. Fay has been successfully representing plaintiffs in Medical Malpractice claims since she joined Faraci Lange’s Buffalo office in 2013.
To contact Faraci Lange about a potential medical malpractice case, call or text us at (888) 325-5150 or click here to submit an online contact form for a free legal consultation.
In January 2018, CPLR 214-a was amended to change the statute of limitations in delayed diagnosis of cancer actions.
The amendment provides that an action against a medical provider for the delayed diagnosis of cancer may be brought either 2 ½ years from when the patient knew or should have known of the alleged negligent failure to diagnose the cancer, but no later than seven years from the alleged negligence, or 2 ½ years from the last occasion where there is continuous treatment.
A similar discovery rule also applies to state and municipal hospitals and clinics pursuant to CPLR 203(g)(2).
Before the amendment to CPLR 214-a, the rule in New York State was that a patient would only have 2 ½ years from the date his or her doctor, a radiologist, or pathologist, missed the diagnosis of cancer. For many people, it is not even known that there has been a delayed diagnosis of the cancer until months or years later, and in some cases, not until after the statute of limitations has run.
This is exactly what happened to Lavern Wilkinson. By the time Lavern was properly diagnosed with the lung cancer in 2012, the statute of limitations for her to bring a medical malpractice action was gone.
In February 2010, Lavern had a chest x-ray ordered during an emergency room visit. The radiologist who reviewed the chest x-ray saw a suspicious mass in Lavern’s right lung, but she was never told the results of the chest x-ray.
Then, in May 2012, Lavern returned to the same ER with a chronic cough and another chest x-ray was ordered. It was then discovered that the cancer had spread to both of Lavern’s lungs, her liver, brain and spine.
If the lung cancer had been diagnosed in 2010, it could have been treated with surgery. By May 2012, the lung cancer was stage four and terminal.
Lavern’s wish was for the law to change so that what happened to her did not happen to anyone else.
This bill amended the statute of limitations for delayed diagnosis of cancer cases to 2 ½ years from the date of the discovered delayed diagnosis of cancer, up to seven years from the date of missed diagnosis, or 2 ½ years from the last occasion where there is continuous treatment.
This is an important amendment to the statute of limitations in medical malpractice cases and it will allow many patients to pursue possible claims for delayed diagnosis of cancer which previously may have been time barred.
Stephen Schwarz, Managing Partner of Faraci Lange, has successfully represented plaintiffs in Medical Malpractice cases for over thirty years.
Medicine has undoubtedly progressed and improved over the past twenty-five years. There are better surgical techniques, improved medications, targeted chemotherapies and immunotherapies for various cancers and countless other advances. Moreover, restrictions have finally been imposed on the hours required of residents in training which prevent them from having to make life and death decisions after being awake for 48 hours or more.
The now universal use of electronic medical records makes patient history and past test results easily accessible to care providers. The use of “standard of care” checklists that pop up automatically when a diagnosis is made with the proper steps to follow reduces the dependence on a doctor’s memory of what he or she may have learned years before and may have changed since. All of these developments have generally led to better care and patient outcomes.
Yet, some of the features of electronic medical records, such as the ability to easily cut and paste text entered by others to save time and avoid writing a new contemporaneous note and overuse of mind-numbing checklists, can create blind spots as to what is actually happening with a patient. These factors can also facilitate mistakes in diagnosis by a group of health care providers taking care of a patient in a team setting with one physician after another following an assumed diagnosis entered into the chart like lemmings following one after another over a cliff.
The phenomenon known as Confirmation bias is defined as the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories. It consists of unconsciously accepting facts that fit one’s preconceived notion and rejecting facts that don’t, even though all of these facts should be given equal weight. When this happens in medicine, where an early or preconceived diagnosis is followed blindly without further thought, serious consequences to the patient can follow.
Two recent cases I am handling sadly provide poignant examples. In the first case, a child was brought to a university medical center with bizarre symptoms that included involuntary and uncontrolled movements of his arms and legs. The child had a prior diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder, and when he presented to the first neurologist at the hospital, that was apparently all she saw. She mistakenly diagnosed the child with what is called a “conversion disorder” which means that an illness of the mind produces actual physical symptoms in other parts of the body. Over the course of the next two months the child was brought back to the same hospital multiple times with increasing symptoms. But with each visit, after cursory examinations the care providers looked back to the conclusion reached by the first neurologist and adopted it without further thought, also condescendingly remarking in the records that the parents were wasting the doctors’ time in continuing to bring in this child for neurological evaluation when he clearly has only a psychiatric condition.
After two months of symptoms worsening, the child lost his ability to speak. Because the university medical center was the dominant medical culture in the community, it was difficult to get anyone else to see the child. Finally, a neurologist independent of the hospital agreed to see him and, based upon a careful and detailed review of the history of symptoms, suspected that the child never had a psychiatric disorder at all. Rather, this neurologist believed the child’s symptoms were caused by his immune system attacking healthy brain cells after being activated by a viral infection. The new neurologist sought out a national specialist who had experience with autoimmune encephalopathy. The correct diagnosis was made and effective treatment started. Sadly, by the time treatment began the child had permanently lost his ability to speak and was greatly impaired in his ability to read and write.
In the second case, a man presented to a community hospital with a sudden difficulty reading. He was given a brain CT scan which showed over a dozen tiny hemorrhages in his brain. This presentation is frequently seen in brain metastasis from malignant melanoma, so it was decided to do a biopsy removing one of the hemorrhagic areas to determine if it was indeed caused by cancer. The lesion was removed and analyzed but no cancer was found. However, because the appearance of the brain scan was so suspicious, some of the doctors recommended going to the nearest university medical center for a second opinion. The man had previously had a cardiac ablation procedure, which is a treatment for the condition atrial fibrillation, where the synchronization of contractions of the heart’s chambers is slightly off kilter. This condition puts people at increased risk of small clots forming and traveling to the brain, causing blockage and sometimes tiny hemorrhages like those seen in the CT scan. When the biopsy was negative for cancer, this was what was presumed to have occurred. Thus, the patient went to the other facility with a diagnosis of blood clots from his atrial fibrillation, but also with concern that it still could be cancer.
When the patient arrived at the university medical center, a review of the scan led the team assessing him to think it must be metastatic melanoma regardless of negative biopsy because the pattern was familiar to them for this disease. Since metastatic disease by definition is cancer that has traveled from some primary tumor somewhere else in the body, and since melanoma arises from cells that are found in the skin and a few other areas of the body, an exhaustive search for a primary tumor ensued. But despite head to toe skin examinations, examination of his throat and nasal cavities, eyes and the few other areas of the body where melanin cells occur, no primary tumor of any kind could be found. Undaunted and so overcome by their predetermined conclusion that this must be metastatic melanoma, the team decided that the primary must have disappeared, which has been reported to rarely happen. Then a PET scan was done, which will show areas of high metabolic activity consistent with cancer cells, but it was entirely negative, meaning that there was no obvious cancer found anywhere in his body. Meanwhile, the pathology from the brain biopsy was retrieved from the outside facility and looked at again. The pathologist at the university medical center also applied special stains that can react in melanoma cells. Two out of the three stains did not react, but one did, weakly. Although the pathologist warned that this was not sufficient to confirm a diagnosis, mainly because normal brain cells also can react to this stain, the team of doctors who were so sure that they knew what they were seeing decided this was sufficient to conclude he had the disease.
The medical chart notes throughout this period show that time after time, this “probable melanoma” diagnosis and the same selective history that had led to the diagnosis was repeated verbatim in each chart entry. Its constant repetition seemed to provide a level of certainty to the care team that the facts could not justify.
Malignant melanoma with metastasis to the brain has a very poor prognosis, with patients surviving for only a few months. Except when a specific mutation can be found in the cancer cells, there is no effective chemotherapy available. Since no actual cancer cells were found, no test for that mutation could be performed. Surgery to remove the metastatic lesion can be performed if there is only one or a small number, but when there are multiple areas of metastasis, the situation the doctors thought they were confronting here, surgery was not an option. That left what is called whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT) which can be coarsely described as zapping the entire brain with radiation in hopes of delaying the spread of the cancer. So the care team recommended that the patient be given WBRT, and after being told he would likely die in a few months regardless, the patient agreed.
This fateful decision was made by the patient without being given some key information. First, WBRT is destructive to the brain. In patients with metastatic melanoma to the brain, this is rarely a problem because they do not live long enough to experience much by way of symptoms from the radiation. Second, and most importantly, WBRT is not very effective to treat malignant melanoma in the brain. Studies show that the treatment only provides an extra month or two of life beyond the average survival when a patient is given no treatment at all. But none of this was explained to the patient because the care team was so sure that their presumed diagnosis was right, in spite of all of the negative findings and the other plausible explanation for the brain hemorrhages.
After getting his multiple WBRT treatments the patient returned for follow up and had another CT scan. The scan showed that all of the hemorrhages had shrunk by 75% which suggested that they had been caused by clots all along and were naturally resolving. Since melanoma is not very sensitive to radiation, such shrinkage would not be expected so soon after treatment if the diagnosis was accurate. Shortly afterward, the pathology that had been read as negative in the first institution and iffy by the second, was sent to a nationally renowned cancer center for another opinion. This cancer center confirmed that no cancer could be diagnosed from the sample.
Although the news that the patient did not have malignant melanoma, or cancer at all, and was not going to die in months was initially welcomed as wonderful, within a few months the effects of WBRT began to take hold. The patient began to have difficulty walking, then started to suffer severe cognitive decline followed by difficulty controlling bowel and bladder function. Within months, he could no longer be cared for at home and had to be sent to a nursing home. His steady decline has continued since.
What seems to have happened in both cases is that assumptions were made and then as the facts were received, the doctors accepted the facts that fit their assumption and disregarded and rationalized away the ones that didn’t, remaining confident in their incorrect diagnoses. Worse, the mistakes of one doctor seemed to be accepted as fact by the others with no one willing to rethink the situation once the presumed diagnosis took hold and began to be repeated time and again in the medical records.
Cases where medical errors have these types of consequences are rare, but the errors themselves are probably not. What separates these two instances from others is that in most cases, no dire consequences resulted from the erroneous assumptions and faulty thinking. But doctors and hospitals, especially teaching institutions, need to systematically address this mindset and develop procedures to avoid it.
To contact Faraci Lange about a potential medical malpractice claim, call or text us at (888) 325-5150 or click here to submit an online contact form for a free legal consultation.
A bill was recently passed by the United States House that would place a cap on the amount that can be recovered in medical malpractice lawsuits, no matter how severe the negligence and resulting injuries may be.
The limit placed by the bill, H.R. 1215, caps non-economic damages at $250,000 for health care lawsuits. These damages would cover the pain and injuries that occur as a result of the medical negligence.
“…damages caps prevent victims of some of the vilest and most egregious crimes from ever receiving the justice they deserve. They also tie a jury’s hands, and make their verdicts nearly irrelevant, by allowing legislators instead of jurors to decide the maximum award allowed in these cases,” stated Paul Bland, executive director of Public Justice.
H.R. 1215 passed the U.S. House by a margin of just eight votes, and is now making its way towards the Senate.
Senators should ensure that this bill does not become a law. State lawmakers need to repeal such laws and allow injured victims to be awarded the damages they deserve.
The Buffalo Veterans Affairs Medical Center recently notified 526 patients of the use of an improperly cleansed medical scope, which may have put them at risk of infection.
A recent review of the disinfection process for endoscopes found that steps in the manufacturer’s instructions were not being followed by an employee of the hospital.
In a statement, hospital officials characterized the risk of infection as “very low” and offered free screening to the patients.
Risk with inadequately cleansed medical scopes revolves around the transmission of such illnesses as hepatitis C and HIV.
“Notification does not mean veterans were infected,” stated VA medical center officials.
Endoscopes are lighted, flexible tubes that are used by doctors to see inside patients’ bodies. They have been known to be difficult to clean and require careful steps to disinfect for reuse in another patient. Hence, there has been an increasing concern about infections related to these devices.
Research indicates that organic residues may remain after manual cleaning and contamination can persist even in institutions with documented adherence to sanitation guidelines.
Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, expressed his concern in a statement last week. “We will ask for more details, await the results of the ongoing investigation, and will work with the Buffalo VA to see that our nation’s duty to properly care for our veterans is met,” he said.
This is not the first time that the Buffalo VA Medical Center’s processes have come under question.
An overwhelming majority of the Legislature passed a bill called “Lavern’s Law” back in June, which would give cancer patients alleging malpractice twice as long to bring action than what is currently mandated. Governor Andrew Cuomo has yet to sign the bill and is waiting for it to be formally sent to him.
New York State law currently requires that medical malpractice lawsuits be brought to action within 15 months after a medical mistake is made. This has proven to work against patients as, many times, the negligence is not discovered until it’s too late.
Lavern’s Law would increase the statute of limitations for medical malpractice to two and a half years. Essentially, the clock would start running from the time that the misdiagnosis is discovered.
In order to reach a compromise, legislators have only included cancer patients in this bill and not all instances of medical malpractice.
Governor Cuomo has expressed his agreement with the principle of having the clock on medical malpractice cases start at the moment of discovery. Although, groups that represent doctors and hospitals are actively pushing him to veto the bill.
Trial lawyers working to represent injured individuals want Lavern’s Law signed in order to give patients affected by malpractice a fair chance.
In New York, hospitals are required to keep “[a]n accurate, clear, and comprehensive medical record . . . for every person evaluated or treated as an inpatient, ambulatory patient, emergency patient or outpatient of the hospital.” 10 NYCRR § 405.10 (2015). This includes keeping an audit trail for all electronic medical records (“EMR”). See 10 NYCRR § 405.10 (2015).
An EMR audit trail is considered system metadata because it contains “a record of every change or addition to an electronic medical record” and “includes the identification of the terminal used to access the record and the date, time, and author of the change or addition to the electronic medical record.” Jeffrey L. Masor, Electronic Medical Records and E-Discovery: With New Technology Come New Challenges, 5:2 Hastings Sci. and Tech. L. J. 245, 254 (2013) (citations omitted).
Audit trails can demonstrate whether records have been changed, notes have been added, or items have been deleted from the electronic medical record. However, audit trails provide much more than simply proof of alterations. These audit trails identify who accessed the patient’s records, when they were accessed, who authored each entry, when and from what terminal. On the one hand, audit trails provide complementary data to the EMR produced and illustrate what was done and by whom at the time the patient was cared for. On the other hand, the audit trail illuminates alterations or deletions not depicted in the electronic medical record. Therefore, it is a requisite complement to the EMR.
Not surprisingly, courts have required parties to produce electronically stored information in a format that includes metadata. See Hinshaw & Culbertson, LLP v. e-Smart Tech., Inc., No. 113108/09, slip op. at 5 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Mar. 27, 2012); Irwin v. Onondaga Cnty. Res. Recovery, 72 A.D.3d 314, 321 (4th Dep’t 2010). In Hinshaw, the court reasoned, “While certainly metadata is discoverable to determine if and when documents may have been altered, that is not the only reason for production. General information about the creation of a document, including who authored a document and when it was created, is pedigree information often important for purposes of determining admissibility at trial.” Hinshaw & Culbertson, LLP v. e-Smart Tech., Inc., No. 113108/09, slip op. at 4-5 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Mar. 27, 2012).
Similarly, in Irwin, the court concluded that “system” metadata constituted a “record” subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). Irwin v. Onondaga Cnty. Res. Recovery, 72 A.D.3d 314, 322 (4th Dep’t 2010). Although that case involved a FOIL request and did not specifically address whether metadata is subject to disclosure under the CPLR, the court recognized that the production of a document electronically without metadata limited the information provided. Irwin v. Onondaga Cnty. Res. Recovery, 72 A.D.3d 314, 321-22 (4th Dep’t 2010). Specifically, the information would be limited to the “actual text or superficial content of the document,” whereas when system metadata is included, there is a complete record. See Irwin v. Onondaga Cnty. Res. Recovery, 72 A.D.3d 314, 321-22 (4th Dep’t 2010).
In a case where discoverability of the EMR audit trail was at issue, Vargas v. Lee, the court held that the plaintiff did not satisfy his burden of establishing the necessity and utility of the requested audit trail because he did not distinguish the audit trail’s utility from that of its corresponding EMR. Vargas v. Lee, No. 507923/2013, slip op. at 4 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. June 5, 2015).
At issue in that case was the timing and substance of the plaintiff’s care from May 1 through May 17, 2012; so the plaintiff requested the hospital’s EMR audit trail. Vargas v. Lee, No. 507923/2013, slip op. at 2 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. June 5, 2015). The defense objected to the disclosure of the audit trail on the grounds that it constituted overreaching, was overbroad, unduly burdensome, and not relevant. Vargas v. Lee, No. 507923/2013, slip op. at 2 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. June 5, 2015). The court reasoned that the plaintiff could presumably obtain the patient treatment details from the already produced EMR and that the plaintiff did not argue there were authenticity issues or analogous salient considerations. Vargas v. Lee, No. 507923/2013, slip op. at 4-5 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. June 5, 2015).
Further, the court articulated, “system metadata production has been considered relevant when the process by which a document is created is in issue or there are questions concerning a document’s authenticity.” Vargas v. Lee, No. 507923/2013, slip op. at 4 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. June 5, 2015) (citing Aguilar v. Immigration & Customs Enforcement Div., 255 F.R.D. 350, 354 (S.D.N.Y. 2008)).
A case having a contrary result from Vargas v. Lee was Gilbert v. Highland Hospital, which was argued by Faraci Lange, LLP Managing Partner, Stephen G. Schwarz. 31 N.Y.S.3d 397 (Monroe Cty. March 24, 2016). In this case, plaintiff sought discovery of the EMR audit trail to determine: (1) whether certain physicians were involved in her care and treatment and the extent, if any, of that involvement; (2) names and times of certain entries that were missing from the EMR; (3) the accuracy of the information in the EMR; and (4) the times, locations, and actions taken by various staff members not provided on the face of the EMR. See generally id.
In granting plaintiff’s motion to compel discovery of the EMR audit trail, the court found defendant’s broad objections to production unpersuasive. Id. at 558-60. Specifically, the court reasoned the EMR audit trail was relevant to the allegations in the complaint as pleaded (or pled) by the plaintiff, was material and necessary, and did not constitute a fishing expedition. Id. Moreover, because who received what information and when was important to the claims or defenses of a party, plaintiff met the standard articulated by Vargas v. Lee. Id.
EMR audit trails could be extremely valuable in your medical malpractice action. Commentators interpreting the case of Karam v. Adirondack Neurosurgical Specialists, P.C., 93 A.D.3d 1260, have theorized that for plaintiffs’ attorneys to competently represent clients and fulfill their ethical obligations, they must have all available electronically stored information that may be relevant to their case, which would necessarily include the audit trail. See Hon. John M. Curran and Mark A. Berman, Gremlins and Glitches Using Electronic Health Records at Trial, NYSBA Journal, at 23 (May 2013).
Therefore, plaintiffs’ attorneys should be regularly asking for such metadata and determining whether it is useful in their case.
Lesley E. Niebel focuses her practice on personal injury and has worked on a range of cases, including medical malpractice, auto accidents, and products liability, since joining Faraci Lange’s Rochester office in 2015.
The Journal of General Internal Medicine recently published a study that investigated patients’ awareness of physicians who receive payments from pharmaceutical and medical device firms and found that very few Americans are unaware of their doctors receiving industry payments.
As dictated by the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, a part of the Affordable Care Act, medical drug and device companies are required to report payments they make to physicians. This information is also publicly available through the Open Payments Program.
An online survey was conducted in late 2014, in which respondents were asked about their knowledge of payments in the medical industry in general, if they knew this information was publicly available, and if they were aware whether their frequent physician had received these payments.
The results of the survey were then linked to data of the respondents’ physicians found in Open Payments.
Of these survey respondents, only 12% were aware that medical industry payment information was publicly available, and only a mere 5% knew if their own doctor had received payments from medical drug companies or not.
Medical malpractice is when a doctor makes a medical mistake that causes injury to the patient. A medical mistake is when a doctor fails to use reasonable care under the circumstances and does something that another reasonably prudent doctor would not do under the same circumstances. A medical mistake is a departure from accepted practices, also referred to as standards of care that doctors must follow.
Generally, before starting any medical malpractice claim in New York, another physician must review the medical records and find that the doctor made a medical mistake and that the patient was injured as a result. This is referred to as an expert review.
A medical mistake may occur during a surgical procedure. As we all know, there are risks and complications associated with every surgical procedure. There are both unavoidable complications of a surgical procedure and avoidable complications of a surgical procedure.
An unavoidable risk of a surgical procedure occurs when a surgeon uses reasonable care and proper surgical technique during the surgery but, unfortunately, the complication occurs anyway. These unavoidable complications of a surgical procedure are referred to as “accepted risks of the surgical procedure.” An unavoidable complication of a surgical procedure is not considered medical malpractice.
However, there are also avoidable complications of surgical procedures. A preventable medical mistake during a surgical procedure is considered an avoidable complication of the surgical procedure. A preventable surgical complication is something that can be avoided if proper surgical technique or safety rules are followed. A preventable surgical mistake that results in harm to the patient would be considered medical malpractice.
An expert review may be necessary to know if a complication after a surgical procedure is a result of a preventable mistake made by the surgeon during the procedure or was an unavoidable complication of the procedure.
A doctor must explain the risks, benefits, and alternatives of the procedure to the patient before the surgical procedure and obtain the patient’s consent for the procedure. This is referred to as “informed consent” for the surgical procedure.
A patient may have a claim for “lack of informed consent” if a doctor fails to properly explain to the patient the risks, benefits and alternatives of the procedure.
The patient was injured as a result of the procedure.
Whenever a patient feels he or she has suffered harm from a surgical procedure, the first person to turn to for an explanation should be the doctor. If a satisfactory answer is not given or, rarely, if the doctor admits to making a mistake, one might then consider consulting an attorney knowledgeable in the area of medical malpractice claims.
With our highly experienced medical malpractice attorneys and talented nurse consulting staff, Faraci Lange has the talent, resources and experience to succeed against the insurance companies representing doctors and hospitals. That is why more people in Rochester, Buffalo, Monroe and surrounding counties choose Faraci Lange to represent them in medical malpractice actions than any other firm.
Faraci Lange’s Stephen Schwarz and Elizabeth Zorn recently co-published the following article in the Summer 2016 issue of the American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants‘ Journal of Legal Nurse Consulting about the screening process of medical malpractice cases.
Plaintiff firms, such as Faraci Lange, must recognize medical malpractice cases that are likely to fall short on liability, causation, or damages, as these claims are difficult and time consuming to pursue.
Experienced medical malpractice attorneys reject most medical malpractice inquiries. Although there is no central repository of statistics, at our firm we reject 90 to 95% of all potential malpractice cases because we don’t believe there was any negligence or don’t believe we can prove it.
With our highly experienced medical malpractice attorneys and talented nurse consulting staff, Faraci Lange has the talent, resources and experience to succeed in even the most complex medical cases.
To contact Faraci Lange about a potential medical malpractice case, please contact us at our Rochester or Buffalo office or call us at 888.325.5150 for a free legal consultation.

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