Bloomberg's Proposed Budget Cuts Could Cost The City Millions

NEW YORK MEDICAL MALPRACTICE LAWYER PROFFERS WARNING FOR NEW YORK CITY MAYOR

NEW YORK, NY (May 26 2008) -- It could end up costing, not saving, the City of New York hundreds of millions of dollars if Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed plans to cut funds from city services includes hospitals and other city-run healthcare agencies, warned Richard Gurfein, a New York City personal injury lawyer who has tried dozens of serious medical malpractice cases against the City in his thirty-six plus years in legal practice.

“When budget cuts effect City hospitals,” Gurfein explained, “smaller City hospitals take a bigger hit and often outsource, or reduce paid staff, and replace them with part-time and ‘on-call’ attending doctors who are paid by the hour. The result is a decrease in the number and quality of healthcare providers in city hospitals, and a dramatic increase in the number of medical malpractice claims filed against the city by injured parties.”

Gurfein, a partner in the New York personal injury law firm of Gurfein Douglas, noted that properly funded hospitals usually have enough doctors on any given day or night to insure that every shift is covered. In tight budget times, Gurfein noted, it is not unusual for city hospitals to save money by reducing the ranks of the house staff or the full time doctors employed at the hospital.

“New York City has careened from budget crisis to budget crisis for decades,” Gurfein reflected. “In the 1980s,there was a significant push to save money by having women deliver their babies with the aid of midwives instead of full-time staff obstetricians.

“For most simple deliveries,” he explained, “the use of a midwife would present no increase in risk to either the mother or the child. But in a significant number of cases an obstetrician is absolutely necessary, especially in emergency situations where the midwife or nurse monitoring labor is not sufficiently trained or lacks the ability to recognize an emergency.”

One case Gurfein handled back in the 80s involved a midwife who was monitoring a patient’s labor using an electronic fetal monitor. Based on her assessment of the strips, she determined the baby was doing well and that labor was progressing normally.

“Disaster struck,” Gurfein said, “when it was discovered that the strips, which should have been used to monitor the baby’s heart, were actually monitoring the mother's heartbeat and not the baby's, which concealed the fact that the baby was in significant distress. The baby suffered permanent brain damage as a result.”

"Saving a thousand dollars in provider fees," he added, "wound up costing the City five and a half million dollars in legal claims."

Gurfein points out that the average malpractice payment by the city in 2005 was $445,000 (compared to the nationwide average of $298,000 and the NY statewide average of $405,000); and, that one out of every six New Yorkers receives healthcare services from the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation, the agency that owns and operates the city's municipal hospitals.

“Reducing the payouts by only 10% of the $145 million paid out in 2005,” Gurfein calculated, “would yield an additional $14.5 million dollars to keep doctors on-call. You do the math.”

Medical Malpractice Settlement, Brooklyn, NY

$5,493,000.00 Settlement

Medical Malpractice: Midwife mismanaged labor causing brain damage and Cerebral Palsy.

The baby’s mother, a lawyer, was in labor for 48 hours following rupture of membranes (bag of waters). During the last 10 hours of labor the baby suffered continuous fetal distress as recorded on the fetal monitoring strips. Despite these ominous signs, the midwife never called for the assistance of an Obstetrician as she was required to do. The midwife and nursing records showed they misinterpreted the fetal monitor tracing, which actually showed the heart beat of the mother and not the infant.

Compounding that malpractice, following the birth of the baby, the child was placed on the mother’s stomach for “bonding” until a family member yelled out that the baby wasn’t breathing. The baby’s Apgar scores were 1 at 1 minute and 4 at 5 minutes. These scores, which measure the well being of a newborn, were devastatingly low. No pediatrician was in the delivery room, despite the fact that the midwife and nurse “lost” the baby’s heart beat. The child was finally admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) with respiratory distress, intubated and on a respirator.

This unfortunate child suffered multi-organ failure. She is severely retarded with quadraspastic quadriplegia. She is feed through a feeding tube that enters her stomach through a “port” in her belly. She has seizures on almost a daily basis. The settlement will provide for a lifetime of proper care.

Medical Malpractice Verdict in Fulton County, NY

$5,750,000.00 Verdict

Medical Malpractice: Twenty year old wife and mother developed a life threatening infection following the birth of her second child. The obstetricians and nurses failed to recognize the symptoms of infection and discharged her without treatment leading to emergency surgery to remove all of her infected female organs and to create a colostomy.

This 20 year old married lady was cared for by her obstetricians, Dr. Nguyen and Dr. Kaufman, at the Nathan Littauer Community Hospital and Nursing Home in Gloversville, New York (Fulton County). Her delivery was routine and the baby was delivered normal and healthy at 8:25 PM. By 2:00 AM the following morning the mother was experiencing unusual pain. During the next 36 hours her blood tests showed an increasing infection, her pain increased, her entire abdomen became tender and her heart rate became very fast (tachycardia). The doctors and nurses dismissed her complaints as post partum discomfort. Nevertheless, they administered increasing amounts of pain killers including intravenous morphine.

She was again admitted to the hospital the day after her discharge when her husband brought her to Dr. Kaufman because her pain was not being controlled even with the stronger pain killer. It was finally recognized that she had a very aggressive Strep “A” infection and was in septic shock. This young lady was transferred to the Albany Medical Center where surgeons had to remove her uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes in order to save her life. She was given a colostomy (a tube through which feces exits the body) and remained in a coma for two weeks.

Before her discharge, she was started on hormone replacement therapy. However, within 48 hours she developed life threatening blood clots that traveled to her lungs, and she needed to be readmitted to Albany Medical Center for intravenous blood thinners. She remained on medication for one year to make sure the clots didn’t return. As a result, she can no longer take hormone replacement therapy and at age twenty is in menopause. The colostomy was reversed two months later, during her third hospitalization.

This was the largest verdict ever recorded in Fulton County, New York and one of the rare plaintiff’s wins ever in this upstate rural county.

Look Out Below

But Don’t Try Blaming the City If You Get Hurt

“Cross the street if you have to, take a different route home and to work, don’t let your kids play underneath them and complain like hell if you see something that looks unsafe,” warns Richard Gurfein, of the law firm Gurfein Douglas, commenting on the recent NYC Building Department report that cited safety hazards at hundreds of sidewalk sheds set up at construction sites to protect pedestrians from falling debris.

Mr. Gurfein, a personal injury lawyer in New York City with a degree in electrical engineering, explained that all sidewalk sheds and scaffolds are now required by Local Law No. 33 to have a twenty-five foot sign on the outer wall of the shed that displays the permit holders name, address, telephone number, permit number and the permit expiration date.

“If someone has a complaint or concern, they should look for the sign that identifies the permit holder and call the number on the sign,” Gurfein urges. “If the information is missing, pedestrians should notify the borough’s Department of Buildings, Construction Division immediately.”

Gurfein recommends that pedestrians would be wise to look at the walls of the scaffolding to make sure they are solid, without gaps and that no part of them is hanging loosely. Regulations also require that adequate lighting be maintained under the shed and bulbs must be inspected daily and replaced as necessary.

“It’s very important for people to realize,” he added, “that the contractor, subcontractor who installed the shed, and the owner of the property are all responsible for pedestrian safety and can be held liable if someone is injured by falling wood, glass, hardware and other construction debris.”

The City of New York, however, is not generally liable.

“Under the law, the City isn’t responsible if a shed accident happens,” Gurfein explained. “The City is merely exercising it’s municipal duty to the population at large and can't be held liable unless a specific promise was made to a specific person about a specific condition. For example, the people who filed a notice of claim against the city for the recent crane collapse are wasting their time if their claim is merely that the City failed to perform its inspections properly.”

Gurfein suggests that neighborhood residents who must live with the months-long, or years-long intrusion of a sidewalk shed should contact their borough’s Construction Division of the Department of Buildings and ask for a speaker to come to a group meeting to assure residents that the shed is safe and to explain what the division intends to do to keep it that way.

Introduction

We are Gurfein Douglas LLP. We are a law firm that represents people who have been seriously injured in all kinds of accidents or by a doctor, hospital or a product. In this blog, we will publish information about case histories, news, and other information of interest to the public and the industry.