MedMal Insider

When hospitals and medical practices face charges of discrimination from employees, the consequences can include litigation, large payments, morale problems, and less quality care for the patients they serve. How an employer responds can make all the difference in outcomes. Based on closed claims in the Harvard medical system, two cases illustrate that point. We interview Megan Kures, of Hamel, Marcin, Dunn, Reardon and Shea, who offers some principles to follow.

Dr. Gordon Schiff discusses how to prevent a patient's heart attack, this practice would have needed better systems to monitor and identify chronic risk factors.

The defendant’s role in a successful defense against a claim of malpractice is critical, but it isn’t easy. Clinician have to be able to follow advice from lawyers, cope with their own emotions, which often include anger or fear, and project competence and likability to potential jurors. These things—none of which are taught in medical school—can be a challenge to a medical professional. Sometimes malpractice cases have to be settled because the defendant clinician cannot adapt to the legal system.

After a referral visit to a pulmonologist to follow up on a worrisome CT, none of the three parties—the PCP, the patient, and the pulmonologist—ever addressed the issue of the lung nodule again. The patient saw her primary care doctor several times for check-ups and minor issues over the next several years. The patient never returned to see the pulmonologist, and was not explicitly told by either doctor that she might have cancer. Four years after her visit with the pulmonologist, the patient became symptomatic from lung disease and was found to have inoperable cancer, metastatic to cervical spine. She died within months of her diagnosis.

Parents alleged that a delayed diagnosis of a foreign body in their child’s nose caused preventable nosebleeds, nasal infection, nasal septal perforation, and the need for surgery. The malpractice claim named the pediatric group, two pediatricians, and a pediatric nurse practitioner, and was settled in the low range.