lawsuit

Lessons from Medical Litigation of Dentists

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Back in June of 2013, I discussed in the post Lessons from Medical litigation in oral surgery practice several lessons that can be learned upon exploring lawsuits occurring in an oral surgery setting. An interesting post on the same topic but applied to dentists as a whole was just written earlier today in DrBicuspid, titled “When a dentist becomes the defendant,” by Meghan Guthman (October 7, 2013, source: http://www.drbicuspid.com/index.aspx?sec=sup&sub=pmt&pag=dis&ItemID=314397&wf=1660“) Apparently this article was already written in the American Student Dental Association in their summer 2013 issue and was just a reprint. The article discusses some data gathered by Medical Protective which is a malpractice insurance company. Their data shows that the average payment to a plaintiff in a dental malpractice lawsuit is $65,000. Around 20% of their dental malpractice cases between 2003 and 2012 involved a tooth extraction with the average … Read more

The Optional Alternative to Medical Injury Claims

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Previously on this blog I have discussed some of the issues with medical malpractice in the United States and some potential alternatives. In this post Potential Alternatives to the Current Medico-Legal System in the United States I talk about some possible alternatives such as having some agreement directly with the physician and hence avoiding trial lawyers. In this provocative post How to Improve Your Chances to Win a Dental Malpractice Lawsuit I discuss the 4 elements you need to win a malpractice suit in the U.S. and a possible suggestion to help improve your chances of doing so. Last year, Kevin Pho known as “social media’s leading physician voice” discussed in a post written on July 16, 2012, titled “The New York medical malpractice crisis: Who’s to blame?,” how some financially struggling hospitals are going without medical malpractice insurance and just … Read more

Washington Dentist Troubles

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Recently, a few articles appeared on DrBicuspid talking about Washington dentists. One of the dentists is a Washington state dentist, the other is a Washington D.C. dentist. The first article talks about how a now retired Washington state dentist must pay $35 million to 29 former patients. The reason for this is because the court determined that the former dentist had performed numerous unnecessary root canals over a long period of time.   The article discusses how the retired dentist performed over 2,000 root canals on about 500 patients over a five year span several years ago. The dentist who purchased the retired dentists practice said that a lot of failing root canals and railing crowns were being noticed by the patients coming in. The court in this case found that the dentist was negligent, failed to obtain informed consent from … Read more

Attending to the Patient in the Informed Consent Process

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An interesting article titled “Personalized Disclosure by Information-on-Demand: Attending to Patients’ Needs in the Informed Consent Process” written by Gil Siegal, Richard J. Bonnie, and Paul S. Appelbaum appears in the Summer 2012 issue of the The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (vol. 40, issue 2, pages 359-367). A discussion is made of the current informed consent process and how it is the foundation of medical ethics and health law. Now is clear from the complications page of my website http://www.teethremoval.com/complications.html, I have numerous problems with the informed consent process. In the article the authors state “The underlying ethical principle on which informed consent rests — autonomy — embodies the idea that as rational moral agents, patients should be in command of decisions that relate to their bodies and lives. The corollary obligation of physicians — to respect and facilitate … Read more

Litigation In the National Health Service for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

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An article appears in the British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery titled “Litigation in National Health Service oral and maxillofacial surgery: review of the last 15 years,” by A. Gulati et. al. (50, pages 385-388, 2012). The authors state: “Published data regarding litigation in other surgical specialties are plentiful, but to our knowledge there is little detailed analysis of claims within the specialty of oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMFS) despite information being freely available from the NHS Litigation Authority (NHSLA) under the Freedom of Information Act.” The authors used data from April 1995 to August 2010 from the NHSLA. A total of 318 claims were registered during this 15 years. Claims have been increasing in recent years. Of these claims 253 were closed. A total of 137 claims (54%) resulted in compensation with the rest not being successful. The … Read more