Welcome to The Patient Advocate®

This blog contains a discussion of a variety of topics related to medical malpractice. It is intended to be an open dialogue on issues of interest to legal & medical professionals, and anyone interested in or affected by medical malpractice or the health care industry. If you are looking for information related to misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis of cervical cancer, please visit our website at www.MeyersMedMal.com, or the category on cervical cancer here on our blog.

A Patient Should Have a Right to Legal Advocacy

October 13, 2009

In 1998 the United States Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the healthcare industry adopted a Patient Bill of Rights. The same year Pennsylvania enacted a Patient Bill of Rights allegedly for the purpose of providing quality healthcare accountability and protection under Act 68 of 1998. It is interesting that the legislature of [...]

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Heads You Win, Tails I Lose

September 8, 2009

Kevin Pho, M.D in his medical blog, Kevinmd.com, invites a discussion concerning whether elderly patients should choose premature death at home rather than being subjected to the complications that are associated with geriatric admissions.  He concludes that elderly patients admitted to emergency departments should be given the opportunity to choose going home rather than being [...]

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If Mothers only Knew- Revisited

August 27, 2009

News-Medical.net also reports on the trial confirming the neuro protective effect of magnesium sulfate I earlier discussed in “If Mother Only Knew.”  This report misses the point that many physicians still think the standard of practice still does not require that magnesium sulfate be administered to mothers threatening preterm delivery prior to 32 weeks.   Rouse [...]

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Hospital Conceals Airway Accident Resulting in Brain Damage of Child

August 18, 2009

The mother heard speaking in the above ad was present when a teenage driver recklessly careened down a quiet street striking her young son.  The teen pulled into the nearby driveway of his home not even having realized he had hit and dragged the child.  Miraculously, the child had only suffered severe scrapes and bruises. [...]

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Healthcare: Crisis in Quality-Not Cost

August 4, 2009

I believe the public at large has for decades laboured under the impression that here we enjoy the best medical care available (Untrue. By most measures both Germany and France do better).   Perhaps this is the reason that despite the real problems Americans have faced because of the increasing cost of health care the [...]

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Nurses Face Felony Charges for Reporting Malpractice

July 31, 2009

The Associated Press reported July 17, that two West Texas nurses had been indicted with felony charges because they filed an anonymous complaint with the Texas Medical Board.  Their complaint letter asserted that a physician at the Winkler County Memorial Hospital and Health Clinic encouraged patients to buy herbal medicines and that the physician also [...]

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Defensive Medicine is Bad Medicine

July 24, 2009

Ordering tests that are considered medically unnecessary is not defensive medicine but simply thoughtless medicine. I am a lawyer of 35 years experience in representing patients and their families who are victims of medical malpractice. My clients are harmed by thoughtlessness and failed communications and not because an unneeded medical test was not performed. The [...]

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If Mothers Only Knew

July 20, 2009

In an opinion piece published in the June issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Dr. Dwight J. Rouse from the Center of Women’s Reproductive Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, suggests that a thousand fewer children each year would suffer from handicapping cerebral palsy if magnesium sulfate were uniformly administered [...]

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The Electronic Medical Record-Better Medicine?

July 16, 2009

In a previous post I briefly discussed how communication failures in the transmission of test results are common.  Many people think that widespread use of electronic medical records systems throughout all of our health systems will improve medical care. You cannot improve a physician’s standard of practice simply by altering the means by which records [...]

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Patients Not Informed of Clinically Significant Outpatient Test Results

July 10, 2009

The Archives of Internal Medicine, June 22, 2009, published results of a retrospective medical record review involving nineteen community based and four academic medical center primary care practices.  The researchers were intent upon examining how frequently patients were not informed of clinically significant abnormal outpatient test results.  The researcher’s conclusion was that it is common [...]

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