Doctor Errors

Every state in the country, New Jersey not excepted, has legal provisions in the form of statutory law that address what might be regarded as the essentials of medical malpractice.That is, legislators have drafted legislation that covers core areas of importance...

Parents put their trust in doctors when a child needs medical attention. For many parents, trusting the doctors works out in the end, and the child gets adequate medical care. There are some instances, however, in which doctors make errors. New Jersey residents might...

"Kids aren't just small adults."So says Dr. Jack Percelay, an official with the American Academy of Pediatrics, who cites a close connection between that misconception and the medical mistakes that are sometimes visited upon children.A recently issued report authored...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The seminal and oft-cited estimate offered more than 20 years ago by the national Institute of Medicine concerning the number of people who die annually in American hospitals owing to medical mistakes was for some time viewed as unrealistic.The IOM report entitled "To...

Last year, the Department of Veterans Affairs paid out $91.7 million in medical malpractice claims -- the most in at least 12 years, according to the Government Accountability Office. That represented more than 1,500 malpractice claims against VA providers, which...

Patients have the right to expect that their doctors are qualified professionals who will help them and not cause them harm through medical negligence. To help protect patients, state governments across the country have established medical boards that are in charge of...