Malpractice Lawsuits Cost NYC Over $100 Million

Medical malpractice suits cost New York City $135 million in 2011, a five percent increase from 2010, according to the New York Daily News. For the victims, medical mistakes leave permanent and debilitating scars and has resulted in deaths that were preventable.

A 38-year-old Bronx woman got a $8 million award before her malpractice case went to trial. She went to a hospital to be treated for what she though was a cheek infection. Court records showed that a dentist drained an abscess from her cheek and sent her home. She returned ten days later in excruciating pain. The infection had spread from her cheek to her neck and spine and left her paralyzed from her neck down.

According to her attorney, the dentist neglected to request a culture of the infected tissue, which would have helped him correctly diagnose the woman as having MRSA, a dangerous but increasingly common infection. The attorney said that his client’s loss of independence as a result someone’s negligence was horribly unfair.

Settling a malpractice suit can take months or even years, as was the case for a Brooklyn family. In 1988, a 10-year-old girl was rushed to hospital after having a severe asthma attack. She was put on a respirator. Her doctor failed to ask her mother for the girl’s medical history, nor did he administer any sedatives, pain medication or muscle relaxant, according to court documents. The inept doctor then set the ventilator at a breaths-per-minute level four times than that required for a small child.

The girl became extremely agitated and had to be restrained to the bed. She died three hours later due to her lungs being “blown out” with the excess oxygen, according to the family’s attorney.  It would be nine years later, in 2007, before the family would be awarded $500,000 for wrongful death and $3.5 million for their pain and suffering. An appeal tied up the case in the courts for four more years, which cost the city thousands in legal fees, plus nearly a half-million in interest on the delayed payout.

Officials with Health and Hospitals Corp. (HHC) would not comment on the individual cases, but they insist that the amount of malpractice payouts in New York City has reduced by about $65 million annually since 2003. A HHC spokesperson attributes the reduction to a comprehensive malpractice reduction initiative designed to help reduce malpractice claims and lawsuits. The initiative did nothing to help a 43-year-old Kings County man.

In 2007, the man checked into a hospital, complaining of difficulty seeing out of one of his eyes—an early warning sign of a stroke. According to his attorney, the triage nurse on duty did nothing to help. The man suffered a stroke that left him nearly totally paralyzed and unable to speak clearly. HHC settled the man’s suit for $5.5 million.