Indiana Injury Law Blog

Unwarranted, unnecessary and unwanted cesarean section deliveries and hysterectomies not only put millions of women through anguish every year, but they also result in billions of dollars in expenses. That’s not even counting costs from the long-term impact of these procedures.

Unfortunately, cesarean sections are fast taking over as the most frequently used more of delivery in the United States. According to the National Center for Health Statistics Division of Vital Statistics, 31.1% of deliveries in the US in 2006 were through cesarean sections.

However, C-sections are recommended under two situations-placenta previa where the placenta attaches itself to the uterine wall covering the cervix, and placenta accrete, where the placenta does not attach itself to the uterine wall.

However, these situations are extremely rare, and in combination, account for less than 1% of all C-sections performed the US. That means up to 99% of C-sections performed the US every year might be unnecessary. These unnecessary surgeries severely increase complications for the mother. Some studies estimate that the risk of complications could be as high as four times. Besides, there are immense financial costs from these surgical deliveries. The cost of an average surgical delivery costs about 76 % more than a vagina delivery.

Similarly, the number of hysterectomies performed in the US is off of the charts. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one out of every three women has undergone a hysterectomy by age 60. There is absolutely no corresponding similarity in procedures for men of the same age. 85% of these hysterectomies were not necessary.

Why do we have such high rates of gyno -obstetric surgeries in the US? One of the biggest factors is that that these surgeries are simply easier for doctors and hospitals for whom, time equals money. It's much easier to perform a C-section than it is to wait for a patient to deliver vaginally.

According to an article published in 2007 in Health Insurance Underwriters magazine, approximately $17 billion every year is spent on unwanted, unwarranted and unnecessary C-section and hysterectomies in the US. That is definitely a conservative estimate because it does not include the long-term impact of undergoing hysterectomies, like long-term medications, health complications etc. Unfortunately, most women who undergo C-sections and hysterectomies remain unaware that they have other choices, and that these procedures could, in the case of hysterectomies, cause irreversible damage to their health.

The Indiana medical malpractice attorneys at Theodoros and Rooth represent injured victims of surgical errors, misdiagnoses, failure to diagnose, emergency room errors, medication errors and other forms of medical malpractice around Indiana.

Out of the millions of surgical procedures that take place every year, approximately 7.5 million are believed to be unnecessary procedures. Other estimates place the number of unnecessary surgical procedures at 60% of the total number of surgeries in the country, excluding cosmetic surgery.

It’s distressful to think that your surgeon could recommend a surgical procedure that is not entirely necessary for you. Unfortunately, this happens all too often. Sometimes, this happens because of general ignorance, but other times, it happens because your doctor simply didn't care to research your condition in detail to determine that you were indeed an eligible candidate for surgery. However, as Indiana medical malpractice lawyers are finding out, many of these unnecessary surgeries are simply being performed by doctors who are greedy.

For every doctor, surgery means big money. Recommending a surgery to a patient makes much more financial sense for doctors than recommending conservative and time-consuming treatments and therapies. The greed for financial profits not just by doctors, but also the hospitals they work for, has meant millions of Americans going under the knife every year for unnecessary reasons.

The cardiac health sector has some of the highest rates of unnecessary surgical procedures in the country. According to some doctors, coronary bypass surgeries are the most frequently performed unnecessary surgeries in the country. These surgeries often lead to complications, and even death.

Women's health care has been another area where doctors freely push and promote unnecessary surgical procedures. Cesarean sections come to mind. Having a C-section has become exceedingly common these days. Many of the women who undergo a C-section remain blissfully unaware of their options, and are operated on by doctors who can't be bothered to wait for a vaginal delivery.

There's no doubt that these procedures are extremely lucrative for doctors and hospitals. In one case, an ophthalmologist billed his Medicare provider approximately $46 million over a period of four years, for unnecessary surgeries he had performed in patients.

Americans are going under the knife more than ever before, but very rarely, with good reason. That is a shocking fact, and entirely true. According to Prevention.com, every year, approximately 2.5 million Americans undergo an unnecessary surgical procedure. In many cases, these procedures not only do not benefit the patients, but could also actually cause them harm.

Here are four of the most common unnecessary surgical procedures performed in the US.

Knee arthroscopy
More than 650,000 knee arthroscopy surgeries are performed every year in the US. A study conducted in 2002 on osteoarthritis patients, found that there was no difference among these patients, and those who had undergone knee arthroscopy to treat their condition. That however does not seem to stop surgeons from recommending these procedures to thousands of patients every day

Spine surgery
Every year, more than 1 million patients in the US undergo spinal surgery. This is a major money spinner for surgeons. A typical spine surgery can include insertion of plates and screws, which means that the costs of the surgery get inflated. There's much money to be made here for surgeons, in spite of the fact that results after the surgery are nothing to write home about. People continue to suffer from chronic back pain even after having the surgery. More than 1 million patients in the US undergo spinal surgery every year.

Hysterectomy
Approximately 600,000 women go under the knife to have a hysterectomy every year. This is the second most frequent surgical procedure performed on women, next only to cesarean section deliveries. In some cases, hysterectomies are necessary to save a woman's life. However, those cases are few and far between. In an overwhelming majority of hysterectomies that take place in the United States every year, the decision to recommend a surgery was wrongly made.

Angioplasty
An angioplasty may not have much benefit if it is performed during certain times. For instance, an angioplasty performed when you're not having a heart attack may not benefit you. In fact, it could actually cause you harm. Angioplasty must be performed right after or during a heart attack to show the most results. That doesn't stop cardiologists across the US from recommending hundreds of thousands of angioplasty surgeries every year.

We are currently representing close to 300 people who suffered severe, and in some cases, long lasting damage from unnecessary ENT surgeries performed by Mark Weinberger. One of our clients was recently awarded $300,000 in damages in the first civil trial against Weinberger.

The Indiana medical malpractice lawyers at Theodoros and Rooth represent injured victims of emergency room errors, surgical errors, failure to diagnose, misdiagnosis and other forms of medical malpractice across Indiana.

I'm pleased to announce that the Indiana medical malpractice lawyers at Theodoros and Rooth have obtained a $100,000 verdict for our client, who had suffered serious medical injuries after undergoing a needless sinus surgery performed by “Nose Doc” Mark Weinberger. A jury of six found that Weinberger had performed an unnecessary surgery, and exposed our client 58-year-old William Boyer to unnecessary anguish and suffering.

Boyer's case was the first to go to trial since Weinberger was extradited to the United States. In 2004, Weinberger had disappeared during what was supposedly a family vacation to Greece. He had even been featured on America's Most Wanted. Last year, Weinberger was found hiding in a tent in the Italian Alps. He was later extradited to the United States, where he faced 22 counts of health care fraud against insurance companies.

This is our first verdict against Weinberger, and we will strive to recover justice for all our other clients who are still waiting for their cases to go to trial. We are currently representing at least 287 more former patients of Mark Weinberger. The struggle to recover justice for all these people has only just begun.

Defense attorneys for Mark Weinberger tried convincing jurors that our client had not really suffered lasting medical damage because of the doctor’s heinous actions in performing an unnecessary sinus surgery on him. They also argued that the holes in our client William Boyer's sinuses caused by the unnecessary surgery were correctible. They also pleaded for an award of just $25,000 to compensate Boyer for his suffering from the doctor’s actions.
Ultimately, the jury awarded our client damages of $300,000, 12 times what the defense asked for.
The Indiana medical malpractice lawyers at our firm have obtained an award of $300,000 in a medical malpractice lawsuit filed by our client William Boyer, against Mark Weinberger, the shamed doctor who performed unnecessary surgeries on hundreds of patients in one of the biggest healthcare frauds and medical malpractice cases in Indiana. Mark Weinberger's insurer will pay $250,000 of the damages, and the Indiana Patient Compensation Fund will pay the remaining $50,000.
The Indiana medical malpractice attorneys at our law firm now represent close to 300 former patients of Doctor Mark Weinberger, out of which 20 have cleared the biggest initial hurdle. Under Indiana's laws, a panel of experts consisting of three doctors has found medical malpractice in these cases.

The past couple of weeks has seen plenty of media coverage in Indiana and nationwide as the first of the civil trials against Mark Weinberger went to trial, and ended with a $300,000 verdict for the plaintiff.

Read more about the medical malpractice verdict that Indiana attorney Barry Rooth obtained for his client:

NWI.com

Post Tribune

Here are more posts from when the trial got underway in the latter half of August.

The start of the trial

This is an account of a key moment in the trial- when doctors testified that there was no need and no reason for a surgery on William Bowyer.

This is a look at a long line of Indiana medical malpractice lawsuits against Mark Weinberger, many of which are now due to proceed. We are representing close to 300 former patients of the Nose Doc.

NBC Chicago looks at the beginning of the Mark Weinberger Indiana medical malpractice trial that has riveted the nation.
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-beat/weinberger-boyer-civil-medical-malpractice-suit-101352694.html

The economic costs from motor vehicle accidents in the US, including those from hospitalization expenses and lost income, exceed more than $99 billion a year. That information comes from a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and published in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention. The data that was used for the study came from the year 2005, the last year for which the data was available.

It's a staggering estimate, and more than $70 billion of that huge amount, went towards meeting hospitalization and medical-related expenses of accident victims. What's more, according to the agency, the study only took costs from hospitalization and lost wages into account, and did not include additional expenses, like the increase in auto insurance premiums after an accident.

As we expected, motor vehicle accidents account for the lion’s share of economic costs every year. In 2005, these accounted for approximately 71% of all costs, or $70 billion. Motor vehicle accidents here include accidents involving passenger cars, light pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles.

Motorcycle accidents costs touched $12 billion, pedestrian accident costs equaled $10 million and bicycle accident costs equaled $5 billion in 2005. Some groups like pedestrians and bicyclists had a lower share of the total number of fatal and nonfatal accidents in 2005, but accounted for a substantially larger percentage of costs. That's because motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians have a much higher risk of suffering extreme or severe injuries that can add to their medical expenses.

A $99 billion price tag is completely unacceptable, especially when you consider that most auto accidents are entirely preventable. Lowering accident-related costs will involve implementing and enforcing seat belt laws, encouraging the use of child safety seats, implementing tougher GDL laws for teen motorists, requiring that all motorcyclists and bicyclists wear helmets, and cracking down harder on intoxicated motorists.

The Indiana auto accident attorneys at Theodoros and Rooth represent injured victims of car and motorcycle accidents, and help them recover rightful compensation for their losses.

Scientists conducting experimental tests into the effectiveness of MRSA vaccines have reported substantial success. Their study results have been published in the August issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine. According to the research, these experiments found MRSA vaccines effective in treating infections of the blood, lungs skin and soft tissue.

MRSA infections spread most often in healthcare settings. Every year, approximately 95,000 people are infected with MRSA infections, and 85% of these are contracted through a hospital or other health care setting. A vaccine for MRSA has largely been elusive. This is because of the ability of the organism to reduce the body's resistance to infections. The MRSA infections effectively disable the body's immune system. That is why the body's defenses are not able to eliminate the infection naturally, leading to the infection spreading to the bloodstream and tissues.

Because a person loses immunity after a MRSA infection, these infections can recur again and again. This has posed the biggest challenge in the development of a vaccine for MRSA. However, now scientists have experimented with a combination of two vaccines that can be used to counter the organism’s ability to attack the immune system.

These are not the final vaccines by a long shot. Additional studies will be required before Indiana medical malpractice lawyers have a strong and effective vaccine in place. Developing a vaccine for MRSA could dramatically reduce the number of infections that patients contract every year in hospitals and healthcare settings.

The Indiana medical malpractice attorneys at Theodoros and Rooth represent injured victims of surgical errors, misdiagnoses, failure to diagnose, emergency room errors, medication errors and other forms of medical malpractice around Indiana.

If you need to visit the ER, you might want to pick a hospital that has an advanced electronic medical record system in place. A study coming out of Arizona indicates that hospitals with such systems have shorter wait times, and are also able to discharge patients quicker after treatment.

The study comes from the WP Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. According to the study, if you choose a hospital that has an advanced medical record system, you're likely to spend about 22% lesser time in the ER than you would in a hospital with no such advanced record system in place. Visiting a hospital with an advanced system, results in not just a shorter wait time, but also shorter treatment time, and a shorter overall stay in the hospital.

Researchers examined data from approximately 30,000 patient visits to 364 hospitals nationwide. These hospitals represented three categories of facilities –
• Hospitals with no electronic medical record system in place
• Hospitals with a basic setup
• Hospitals with a sophisticated medical records system

Researchers found that those facilities that had the best medical record system in place had 13.1 percent shorter treatment times and 23.5% shorter ER stays for patients who eventually had to be hospitalized, and 21.3% shorter stays in the ER for patients who were discharged, without being admitted to the hospital.

The results don't really come as a surprise for Indiana medical malpractice lawyers who support the installation of electronic medical record systems to enhance patient safety. The surprise really comes from the finding that hospitals that have a basic electronic medical record system in place do not seem to have any kind of advantage in ER discharge times. In fact, these hospitals fared poorly in the study.

The lesson to take home from this study seems to be that it's not nearly enough to have any kind of electronic medical records system set up at a hospital. It's very important that you go the whole hog and set up a sophisticated medical records filing system to optimize your patient services.