Medical Malpractice Law Firm
Pritzker Olsen Attorneys Medical Malpractice Blog

Pritzker Olsen attorneys have appeared on CBS News, Fox news, and numerous local television stations throughout the country. They have recovered millions for medical malpractice victims and their families. To contact our law firm, please call 1-888-377-8900 (toll free) or submit our free consultation form.

Medical Malpractice Wrongful Death

If you have lost a loved one to medical malpractice, you are not alone. 200,000 people in the United States will die this year from preventable medical errors and hospital infections, according to a report by the Hearst Corporation entitled, "Dead by Mistake."

Our lawyers represent families in medical malpractice wrongful death lawsuits. Our experience has been that the following scenarios are far more common than they should be:
  • Surgery in the wrong part of the body. For example, removing the wrong kidney, removing fat instead of a cancerous tumor, removing the wrong section of the colon for a patient with severe diverticulosis and replacing the wrong heart valve are all considered surgeon malpractice.
  • Medication error. Medication error is a huge problem on every level. Doctors make mistakes with prescriptions. Pharmacies give patients the wrong dose or wrong medication. Nurses in hospitals give patients the wrong dose or wrong medication.
  • Hospital infections. Many lawyers won't touch hospital infection cases because they can be hard to prove, but we have recovered compensation for patients who contracted infections after surgery.
To contact a lawyer at Pritzker Olsen about a medical malpractice wrongful death, please call 1-888-377-8900 (toll free) or submit our free consultation form. We are not paid unless you are.

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Pain Medication Overdose and Other Medication Errors at Children's Hospitals - Medical Malpractice

A recent study published in Pediatrics reviewed 960 randomly selected charts from 12 children's hospitals. The study found 107 unique adverse drug events, which, broken down, included 11.1 adverse drug events per 100 patients, 15.7 per 1000 patient-days, and 1.23 per 1000 medication doses.

According to the study, “Twenty-two percent of all adverse drug events were deemed preventable, 17.8% could have been identified earlier, and 16.8% could have been mitigated more effectively. The most common medication classes causing adverse drug events were opioids/ analgesics (51%) and antibiotics, and the most common stages of the medication management process associated with preventable adverse drug events were monitoring and prescribing/ordering.” The highest rate of adverse drug events per patient occurred in the hematology/oncology units.

Opioid analgesics include morphine, codeine, fentanyl and other pain medications. The risk is pain medication overdose. There are several reasons for this including:
  1. The increased difficulty of calculating dosages of pain medication for children
  2. Failure to adequately monitor the patient
  3. The dangerous nature of these medications
These are extremely dangerous drugs and a small error in administration of these drugs can result in serious injury or death. There are also situations where the pain medication has adulterations or other defects that cause injury. For example, in the last few months, FDA has announced a number of recalls and health alerts involving fentanyl.

If your child experienced serious injury or death after being administered a pain medication or any medication in a hospital, you should contact a medical malpractice lawyer immediately. To contact attorney Fred Pritzker, managing attorney for our medical malpractice cases, for information on medication overdose lawsuits, please call 1-888-377-8900 (toll-free) or submit our free case consultation form.

Article: "Development, Testing, and Findings of a Pediatric-Focused Trigger Tool to Identify Medication-Related Harm in US Children's Hospitals,"Glenn S. Takata, MDa,b, Wilbert Mason, MD, MPHc, Carol Taketomo, PharmDe, Tina Logsdon, MSf and Paul J. Sharek, MD, MPHg, PEDIATRICS, Vol. 121 No. 4, April 2008, pp. e927-e935.

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Look-Alike and Sound-Alike Drugs Cause Mix-Ups

The 8th annual MEDMARX® Data Report released today by the U.S. Pharmacopia (USP) states that medication mix-ups are on the rise due to a proliferation of drugs with similar names and/or packaging. In fact, from 2003 – 2006, more than 1,400 commonly used drugs were involved in errors linked to drug names (brand and generic) that look alike or sound alike.
According to findings in the MEDMARX report, 1.4% of the errors resulted in patient harm, including seven errors that may have caused or contributed to patient deaths. However, due to widespread underreporting of incidents, the study's authors believe that the number of adverse events resulting from look-alike/sound-alike errors is actually understated.

"Errors resulting from look-alike/sound-alike drugs are a problem that spans the entire health care system," said Darrell Abernethy, M.D., Ph.D., chief science officer, USP. "By recording and communicating not only the name of the drug, but also what it is being used for, prescribers, pharmacists and consumers can work together to dramatically reduce these types of medication errors."

According to the USP:

Consumers picking up prescriptions should check the indication for use appearing
on the drug's label or ask their pharmacist for this information. If the
indication given by the pharmacy is different from what the prescriber said the
medication is for, that is a red flag for the consumer to ask questions.
Consumers should also exercise their right to receive counseling from the
pharmacist every time they begin a new medication to ensure they know the name
of the drug and its pronunciation, what it is and how to take it.

Recently, several hospitals have administered heparin overdoses to infants due to a look-alike medication error. Read more about heparin overdoses.

To contact PritzkerOlsen regarding a medication error, please call toll-free at 1-888-377-8900 or submit the firm's free consultation form.

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Nursing Home Medication Error

The elderly residing in nursing homes are often totally dependent on their caretakers. This includes depending on them to administer necessary medications correctly. According to a story in The News Observer, about one third of the nursing home penalties in North Carolina involve medication errors:

Mistakes in prescribing, ordering and dispensing medicine top the list of complaints to state adult care homes.

Residents take as many as 10 medicines a day, and medication aides in adult-care homes across North Carolina must make sure the correct dose of medicine gets to the the right person at the right time. Since 2001, the state has documented the deaths of six residents in cases involving medication errors.

Roughly a third of state penalties -- the most serious are types A and B -- against adult-care homes have involved medication mismanagement during the past year and a half, since the state established a public database of sanctions.

Dealing with the number and consequences of medication errors will require more education for front-line employees and better means of analyzing how errors are made, experts on aging say.

"Good training for both the people who administer the drugs and people who monitor drugs is really imperative," said Thomas Konrad, a senior researcher at the UNC-Chapel Hill Institute on Aging. "These places that are getting type B or type A penalties, it's generally a serious error."

Nursing home medication errors are prolific in every state. If your parent has suffered harm after a nursing home administered the wrong medication or the wrong dose of a medication, please contact us. We are a national law firm with experience with medication error claims. To contact the firm, call toll-free at 1-888-377-8900 or submit the firm's free case consultation form.

Posted December 2007.

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Heparin Overdose a Known Risk

URGENT HEPARIN OVERDOSE INFORMATION: Actor Dennis Quaid's newborn twins were reportedly the victims of a medical error involving an overdose of Heparin while at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in California. The twins and one other infant were reportedly given 1,000 times the intended dose of Heparin—the 10,000 units/mL vial of Heparin instead of the 10 units/mL vial. In 2006, three infants died after the same mistake was made in an Indiana hospital. The two Heparin products both had blue labeling:

These deaths prompted the FDA to notify health professionals of the potential for life-threatening medication errors involving the two Heparin products:
  • Heparin Sodium Injection 10,000 units/mL
  • HEP-LOCK U/P 10 units/mL
Even after the FDA warned hospitals of this potential for error, Heparin overdoses are still occurring. Pritzker | Olsen, a nationally-recognized product liability law firm, is accepting cases involving injury and death as a result of a Heparin overdose. If your child has been injured or has died after the receiving Heparin, you may have a case against the manufacturer of the Heparin product, the hospital where the medication error occurred (in this case Cedars-Sinai Medical Center), and others. For Heparin overdose lawsuit information, contact PritzkerOlsen toll free at 1-888-377-8900 or fill out the firm's online consultation form located on the right-hand side of this page.

Attorney Fred Pritzker has over 30 years of product liability and medical malpractice lawasuit experience and has recovered millions for clients. In addition to his many other accomplishments, he is a member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum and a Certified Trial Specialist. In recognition of his accomplishments, he has been selected by other lawyers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America. PritzkerOlsen is a national law firm and represents clients throughout the United States.

Posted November 2007.

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Pritzker Olsen attorneys have appeared on national television and have been quoted by national publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and Lawyers USA. Attorneys Fred Pritzker, Elliot Olsen and Eric Hageman have been named "Super Lawyers" by Law and Politics magazine (2008 and previous years). Attorney Fred Pritzker is also listed in the current edition (2008) of The Best Lawyers in America. To contact Pritzker Olsen Attorneys, please call 1-888-377-8900 (toll free) or submit the firm's free consultation form.

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Medical Malpractice Topics

Pharmacy Error Settlement

Our law firm recently negotiated a settlement for the family of a woman who was given ten times the prescribed dose of cochicine.

 

$950,000 Recovery for Failure to Diagnose Septic Arthritis

Attorneys Fred Pritzker and Elliot Olsen recently secured a $950,000 recovery on behalf of a young man who developed septic arthritis eight days following knee surgery.

 

Heart Lead Extraction Medical Malpractice Lawsuit

PritzkerOlsen attorneys are representing patients and their families nationwide in product liability and medical malpractice cases involving defective Medtronic Sprint Fideles defibrillator leads. Several patients have died during surgery to remove the defective Medtronic lead.

 

Dental Malpractice: Oral Surgery and Burn Injuries

The FDA has recently stated that poorly-maintained dental equipment has resulted in severe burns. These cases could involve both dental malpractice and product liability claims.

 

Hospital Malpractice Lawsuits

Hospital malpractice includes any type of medical negligence that occurs in a hospital setting, including errors by doctors, nurses, technicians and other hospital staff.

 

Neurosurgery Errors

Surgical errors are common and can lead to serious injury or death. In an article in the medical journal Neurosurgery that reported on a study of 1108 elective neurosurgical procedures, a neurosurgeon recorded 2684 errors in 87.1% of the cases. 22.6% of the errors were considered major. 78.5% of the errors were deemed preventable.

 

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