FAA Shrugs Off Medical Helicopter Safety Issues
The midair crash June 29 of two medical helicopters in Arizona was the seventh medical helicopter crash this year. In all, 16 people have been killed, bringing new public scrutiny to what has become a big business: transporting the sick and injured by helicopter. The number of accidents involving medical transport helicopters has gone up considerably in the industry's recent boom years, with only nine accidents reported in 1999, compared with the seven reported in just the first half of this year.
With 750 medical helicopters currently in operation, and accidents on the rise, it might be presumed that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would be working overtime to come up with measures to ensure patient and crew safety. However, on the day after the deadly Arizona accident, the agency issued a statement saying that, while it would not rule out changing the rules for medical helicopters in the future, regulations currently in place had already 'prompted significant short-term safety gains that do not require rulemaking.' See FAA Fact Sheet on EMS Helicopter Safety: http://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=6763 (last viewed 7/8/08).
Woman Dies Unattended in Emergency Room, While Cameras Roll
A surveillance camera in a Brooklyn Hospital recorded the lack of reaction by nurses and staff members on June 19 as patient Esmin Elizabeth Green, clearly in distress, died on the floor of its emergency room. The woman, a 49-year-old psychiatric patient at Kings County Hospital Center, had been involuntarily admitted to the hospital a day earlier and had been waiting in an emergency room chair nearly 24 hours before she fell to the hospital's floor. For about an hour after the woman fell out of her chair, moved spasmodically and then went still, staffers failed to check on her, with some shown on surveillance tapes actually walking past her and taking no apparent notice. An autopsy showed Green died of blood clots, probably from remaining immobile for an extended period of time.
The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) and others last year filed suit against Kings County Hospital Center to try to force changes in its psychiatric ward. Plaintiffs' filings in that case describe the psychiatric emergency room and its inpatient unit as 'a chamber of filth, decay, indifference and danger.'
On July 1, in response to Green's death, the NYCLU went back to court seeking emergency injunctive relief for the hospital's patients. At the hearing, the NYCLU claimed that hospital staff members either falsified Green's records or filled them out indifferently, because those records say that Green got up and went to the bathroom and then later was 'sitting quietly in the waiting room' ' both around half an hour after the surveillance cameras showed her falling to the floor, where she remained until her death.
In court that day, the City of New York City agreed to institute a set of reforms at Kings County Hospital, including limiting the number of patients in the psychiatric emergency room to 25 and requiring each of them to be checked on at least every 15 minutes.
New Jersey Chiropractors Not Limited to Spinal Manipulation
New Jersey's chiropractors have been given the go-ahead from the state's Supreme Court to manipulate parts of a patient's body other than the spine. The question came up in the appeal of a decision in Bedford v. Riello, A-48-07, in which the trial judge had ruled in limine that a regulation, N.J.A.C. 13:44E-1.1(a), which allows 'articulations of the spine and related structures,' allowed a chiropractor to adjust extremities, like the knee. The trial judge had disallowed the plaintiff's proffered expert testimony that claimed a narrower definition of 'related structures' applied. The State Supreme Court's affirmation of that ruling means the plaintiff in Bedford and future litigants will not be permitted to claim that, as a matter of law, a chiropractor who manipulates a body part beyond the scope of the spine has exceeded the bounds of his or her license.
Plaintiffs in Colorado Get Relief from Onerous Law
A new law went into effect in Colorado on July 1, aimed at reversing the effect on recovery of litigation costs imposed by a 1990 statute and a subsequent judicial interpretation of it in cases in which damages awarded at trial are lower than the amount in a rejected settlement offer. That statute permits defendants to recover litigation costs for the period following a settlement offer that turns out to be higher than the ultimate award. However, in a 1999 case (Bennett v. Hickman, 992 P2d 670 (Colo. App. 1999)), a Colorado appeals court interpreted the statute to mean, additionally, that a plaintiff who rejected a settlement offer worth more than the ultimate award could not recover any costs.
The plaintiff bar has long denounced the results of the holding in Bennett: 'The statute, as interpreted by the court of appeals, discouraged rather than encouraged the early settlement of civil cases,' said David Driscoll, a member of the civil litigation section of the Colorado Bar Association. The problem, according to proponents of the new legislation, was that since the 1999 ruling, defendants have had an incentive to run up plaintiffs' bills by dragging out their settlement
offers. Peter G. Koclanes, an attorney who represented the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, which lobbied for the bill, said the new law would 'provide the defendants with an incentive to make their offer of settlement a reasonable offer of settlement early on in the case.' Chris Ottele, a partner at Denver-based Holme, Roberts & Owen, who represented an organization opposing the bill, disagrees: 'The net result is going to be that there will be fewer settlements,' Ottele said.
Political Disagreements Doom Pennsylvania Council
Most of the staff members of the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (HCCCC) were informed in late June that state law no longer authorized their positions, and they were therefore terminated. This happened because the State Senate, at the last moment, tacked onto the HCCCC's reauthorization legislation a provision that would also reauthorize malpractice insurance subsidies for physicians. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Governor Ed Rendell ' who has made it clear he opposes an extension of the med-mal insurance subsidy unless affordable health care coverage for more Pennsylvanians is created ' says he will not sign the HCCCC reauthorization bill with the medical malpractice insurance subsidy provision in it. Goldstein, Philadelphia Inquirer, 7/2/08.
