From USA Today:

Only about one-third of hospitals provide emergency care to heart attack patients quickly enough to meet scientific guidelines for saving lives . . . Even top performers meet American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology (ACC) guidelines for care in only half their cases, researchers say.

“Even among the better hospitals, only a few hospitals routinely meet the recommended guidelines,” says Yale cardiologist Harlan Krumholz, a leader of the research team and an architect of a national campaign launched Sunday to help hospitals improve their performance. “By next year, we’re going to change that.”

About 200,000 people a year have heart attacks caused by blockages in crucial arteries supplying the heart with blood. About 10,000 patients die of these heart attacks in hospitals each year.

Read the full article here.

If you or a loved one have been injured due to medical negligence, please call Keating, O’Gara, Nedved & Peter at 888/234-0621 or fill out the contact form on this site. Your first consultation is free and we handle cases on a contingency fee basis.

Though it almost goes without saying, medication errors can have serious consequences for patients. A study entitled “Drug Complications in Outpatients” revealed a dramatic increase in medication errors that cost patients their lives.

By reviewing death certificates from over a ten year timeframe, researchers found that there had been a 2.5 fold increase in medication errors that led to patient deaths. The study found:

Over 100,000 fatal adverse drug events (ADEs) were estimated to have occurred in 1994, placing it high among leading causes of death. One million outpatients in the United States are hospitalized with ADEs and 4.7% of hospital admissions are attributed to ADEs. Of all ADEs, 28% are considered preventable.”.

If you or a loved one have been injured due to a medication error, please call Keating, O’Gara, Nedved & Peter at 888/234-0621 or fill out the contact form on this site. Your first consultation is free and we handle cases on a contingency fee basis.

There is a good article out today that discusses medical malpractice and what to do about it.

The article recounts that, “As many as 80,000 people die in the United States each year due partly to medical malpractice, according to a study entitled “Patients, Doctors and Lawyers: Medical Injury, Malpractice Litigation, and Patient Compensation in New York,” published by the Harvard Medical Practice Study.

Despite the high number of deaths and injuries, the article states that, “Only about 2 percent of those injured by physicians’ negligence seek compensation through a lawsuit, according to a 1991 article in the New England Journal of Medicine.”

If you or a loved one have suffered medical malpractice, the article recommends that you talk to a lawyer to help you sort through the complexities of the case, and to determine if you have a case worth pursuing in court.

If you or a loved one have been injured due to medical malpractice, please call Keating, O’Gara, Nedved & Peter at 888/234-0621 or fill out the contact form on this site. Your first consultation is free and we handle cases on a contingency fee basis.