This great irony has always existed in hospitals, whether they are in New Jersey or anywhere else: They are at once facilities where people go to get better while at the same time being environments marked by heightened risk factors that can imperil the health of...
Breslin & Breslin, P.A.
New Jersey plantiiffs can see compensation for medical losses
A St. Louis man suffering from medical errors committed by a VA Medical Center was recently awarded $8.3 million by a federal judge. A father of three, the plaintiff is now paralyzed and mostly non-communicative. The award was split between the plaintiff ($6.8...
Better clarity key aim of new term-pregnancy guidelines
The list of things that can go wrong when medical error features in a baby's delivery in New Jersey or elsewhere is both sobering and lengthy. Birth injury can result from a number of negligent medical acts or omissions during delivery, and outcomes such as cerebral...
Focus: getting from doctor errors to full patient disclosure
It is certainly interesting to read one prominent doctor and medical commentator note that "one of the most difficult moments in one's career" relates not to unraveling a complex illness or informing a patient of tragic news, but, rather, to a discussion with another...
Preventable medical mistakes: an enduring research focus
It is certainly one of the medical industry's central frustrations that preventable medical errors recur in hospitals nationally, including in New Jersey.Over and over and over again.That they do is especially disconcerting because the error rate for things like...
Doctors cite too-rapid integration of electronic health records
Here is a central irony concerning the electronic health record (EHR) systems that are rapidly becoming the norm in hospitals across the country, including in New Jersey, as expressed by a pediatrician."It is actually much harder to take care of sick patients in the...
An obvious concern: surgical objects left inside patients’ bodies
Calling it "a well-known problem, but one that can be prevented," an official with the Joint Commission -- a nonprofit entity that accredits more than 20,000 health care organizations across the country -- recently put the spotlight on so-called "unintended retention...
FDA, others increasingly focused on robotic surgery claims
We last reported on robotic surgery in the United States in a September 5, 2013, blog post. We noted therein a related comment from Martin A. Makary, a noted doctor and medical commentator. In discussing the scope and dimensions of surgical error in connection with...
In the wake of national meningitis outbreak: a rising human toll
By way of an update, which is perhaps timely given a batch of relevant numbers just reported in the Boston Globe, we seek to keep our New Jersey and other readers abreast of material developments in the nation's unprecedented meningitis outbreak that occurred in...
Opinion: A call for a freeze on electronic health record systems
The recent reference in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine to the "Tower of Babel" concerning electronic health records systems (EHRs) is, as most readers might quickly infer, far from being a compliment.The transition from patients' handwritten medical...
