The registry would keep track of anyone convicted of abusing or neglecting an animal in Maryland, by posting the registered offender’s picture, address, and description of the crime for which registration is required on the registry for 5 years. Each offender would be required to register and pay an annual registration fee of $50. A person who fails to register would be guilty of a misdemeanor and once convicted, would be subject to imprisonment not exceeding 1 year and/or a fine not exceeding $1,000.

The first hearing on the bill (SB 301) is scheduled in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee on February 22^nd.  A hearing in the House Judiciary committee on the bill (HB 1020) is still being scheduled.

To view the proposed bills visit the Maryland General Assembly’s website, or click on the following links:

Unfortunately, fatigue among doctors and nurses is a real patient safety issue. As Maryland medical malpractice attorneys, we are concerned by a recent alert published by the Joint Commission warning that drowsy health professionals are more likely to commit medical errors than those who are well-rested.

The Link Between Fatigue and Medical Errors

Research shows that lack of sleep can lead to medical errors. A 2004 study of nurse fatigue and patient safety—the first of its kind—showed that nurses who work shifts of 12.5 hours or longer are three times more likely to make an error in patient care. Subsequent research has confirmed that longer shift length increases the risk of medical errors and close calls and is associated with decreased vigilance.

“An overwhelming number of studies keep saying the same thing – once you pass a certain point, the risk of mistakes increases significantly,” says Ann Rogers, Ph.D., R.N., FAAN, a nationally renowned sleep medicine expert with Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. “We have been slow to accept that we have physical limits and biologically we are not built to do the things we are trying to do.”

Extended duration work shifts also significantly increase fatigue and impair performance and safety. According to an article in the November 2007 Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, residents who work traditional schedules with recurrent 24-hour shifts:

• Make 36 percent more serious preventable adverse events than individuals who work no more than 16 consecutive hours.
• Make five times as many serious diagnostic errors.
• Have twice as many on-the-job attentional failures at night.
• Experience a 1.5 to 2 standard deviation deterioration in performance relative to baseline rested performance on both clinical and non-clinical tasks.
• Report making 300 percent more fatigue-related preventable adverse events that led to a patient’s death.

What Can Be Done to Prevent Fatigue-Related Medical Errors?

The Joint Commission alert suggests several steps providers can take to lower the risk of harm. It directs organizations to assess their fatigue-related risks and a review of staffing and other relevant policies to ensure they address extended work shifts and hours. Since patient hand-offs are a time of high-risk – especially for fatigued staff – organizations should assess hand-off processes and procedures to ensure that they adequately protect patients. In addition, the Joint Commission suggests organizations create and implement a fatigue management plan that includes scientific strategies for fighting fatigue.

How We Can Help

Maryland medical malpractice actions are often complicated. Therefore, it is important to have the assistance of a skilled and experienced attorney by your side.

If you believe that you may have suffered from medical malpractice, it is important to speak with an attorney who specializes in this area as soon as possible. Upon meeting with a medical malpractice attorney, you will be asked to explain what happened in as much detail as possible. It is helpful to bring a copy of your medical records as well. The attorney will then be able to discuss your legal options with you.

The personal injury attorneys of Hyatt & Weber, P.A. understand the potentially devastating impact of a serious accident or medical mistake. If you or someone you love has been injured due to someone else’s negligence, we are here to help. Our Maryland personal injury attorneys are experienced and dedicated to pursuing the compensation you deserve.

To better understand your rights, contact us today.

The family of a Maryland college student has reached a $2.7 million settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit involving an all-terrain vehicle accident in Pennsylvania. According to the Times Tribune, 19-year-old Jonathon Byram, from Sykesville, Md., was a passenger on the vehicle driven by Mark Renehan, a college student from Connecticut, when it crashed and rolled over.

The victim’s father, Daniel Byram, filed a federal lawsuit, claiming Mr. Renehan was intoxicated and driving excessively fast when the accident occurred. The lawsuit also alleged that the family of Mr. Renehan served alcohol to them on a “continuous basis” over several hours leading up to the ATV accident, and that Mr. Renehan admitted to state police he consumed alcohol.

The Risk of Injury Associated With ATVs

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case; ATV accidents are on the rise in Maryland and across the country. According to a recent study, there were approximately 1,117,000 emergency room visits and 495 deaths due to ATV injuries nationwide in 2001, increases of 211% and 159% respectively over 1993.

These startling figures highlight the need for additional efforts to improve ATV stability, increase helmet use, and train riders to safety operate these vehicles.

The personal injury attorneys of Hyatt & Weber, P.A. understand the potentially devastating impact of a serious accident. If you or someone you love has been injured due to someone else’s negligence, we are here to help. Our Maryland personal injury attorneys are experienced and dedicated to pursuing the compensation you deserve.

To better understand your rights, contact us today.

A Maryland mother is contemplating a Maryland medical malpractice lawsuit after her child was the victim of a serious medical error at a Maryland hospital. Social services took her baby away after a computer glitch showed that her infant had tested positive for PCP and cocaine.

Michelle Weber says she delivered her son Jeff last month inside Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, Maryland. Shortly after delivery, tests indicated Jeff tested positive for drugs, prompting a call to social services.

“The next morning the doctor got there and that’s when he told me the baby tested positive for [barbiturates] and cocaine,” Weber said. “I told him there was no way. It’s not possible.”

Weber, herself an addictions nurse, said she insisted that hospital staff test her for drugs. When the results came back negative for any drugs, the hospital realized that they had made an error.

“When they tested me and I was negative and he was positive, they realized there had to be a mistake,” Weber told WBOC-TV.

Weber says the hospital mailed her an apology letter explaining that her son never tested positive for drugs, and that it was an error caused by scheduled computer down time.

How We Can Help

Maryland medical malpractice actions are often complicated. Therefore, it is important to have the assistance of a skilled and experienced attorney by your side.

If you believe that you may have suffered from medical malpractice, it is important to speak with an attorney who specializes in this area as soon as possible. Upon meeting with a medical malpractice attorney, you will be asked to explain what happened in as much detail as possible. It is helpful to bring a copy of your medical records as well. The attorney will then be able to discuss your legal options with you.

The attorneys of Hyatt & Weber, P.A. understand the potentially devastating impact of a serious accident or medical mistake. If you or someone you love has been injured due to someone else’s negligence, we are here to help. Our attorneys are experienced and dedicated to pursuing the compensation you deserve.

To better understand your rights, contact us today at leads@hwlaw.com or 410-513-9349 for a free consultation.

A certificate of merit is essentially a document provided by a medical doctor attesting that the health care provider deviated from the applicable standard of care, which proximately caused the plaintiff’s injury. The requirement is designed to prevent frivolous medical claims from being filed.

In Maryland medical malpractice cases, the certificate of merit must contain the following elements:

• Where the doctor is licensed;

• That the doctor reviewed the relevant medical records;

• That the doctor believes within a reasonable degree of medical probability that the treating doctor departed from the applicable standard of care in treating the plaintiff and that deviation(s) were the proximate cause of the alleged injuries; and

• That the doctor does not devote annually more than twenty percent (20%) of his professional activities to testifying in personal injury claims.

The necessary qualifications of the medical doctor depend on the subject matter of the particular claim. With limited exceptions, the doctor must be board-certified in the relevant area of medicine.

How We Can Help

Maryland medical malpractice actions are often complicated. Therefore, it is important to have the assistance of a skilled and experienced attorney by your side.

If you believe that you may have suffered from medical malpractice, it is important to speak with an attorney who specializes in this area as soon as possible. Upon meeting with a medical malpractice attorney, you will be asked to explain what happened in as much detail as possible. It is helpful to bring a copy of your medical records as well. The attorney will then be able to discuss your legal options with you.

The personal injury attorneys of Hyatt & Weber, P.A. understand the potentially devastating impact of a serious accident or medical mistake. If you or someone you love has been injured due to someone else’s negligence, we are here to help. Our Maryland personal injury attorneys are experienced and dedicated to pursuing the compensation you deserve.

To better understand your rights, contact us today at leads@hwlaw.com or (410) 513-9349 for a free consultation.

Infection/MRSA cases that do warrant investigation are as follows:

 1.         Failure to recognize MRSA soft-tissue infection.  Conventional teaching is to treat skin and soft-tissue infections with agents such as cephalexin or its intravenous counterpart, cefazolin.  Patients who fail to respond require either or both a culture and switch in treatment to include an agent that covers MRSA such as vancomycin, trimethoprim-sulfa, or linezolid.  Failure to do so or delay in doing so can lead to necrotizing fascitis, osteomyelitis and other life-threatening complications and death.

2.         Patient with history of MRSA and recurrent soft-tissue infection is assumed to have MRSA until proven otherwise.  To treat such a patient with a wound infection with an agent such as cephalexin delays appropriate therapy and subjects the patient to unnecessary complications.

3.         Failure to appropriately screen for MRSA. Preoperative patients who undergo hardware or prosthesis material placement including vascular grafts are now recommended to be screened preop for MRSA.  If screen is positive, the options are decolonization (which can take several days to a week) or use of prophylactic vancomycin preoperatively.  Failure to take either of these steps can lead to hardware and wound infection.

4.         Delays in recognition and treatment of MRSA bloodstream infections still occur, often with devastating results.  No bacteremia with S. aureus, MRSA or MSSA (Methicillin-Sensitive Staphylococcus Aureus) is ever considered a “skin contaminant” (such thinking was common years ago but has been shown to be incorrect).

5.         Failure to appreciate that a deep space infection usually requires drainage.  This can occur with MRSA or MSSA but is more likely to be more devastating with MRSA.

6.         Failure to appreciate side effects and limitations of therapies such as linezolid and vancomycin.  Linezolid, for example, should never be used beyond two weeks due to bone marrow toxicity.  It is also bacteriostatic and not cidal which renders it suboptimal for osteomyelitis for which the drug is not FDA-approved.

As Maryland medical malpractice attorneys, we want to make sure that patients understand their legal rights. In many cases, patients may be able to recover from those who are responsible for the surgical injuries.

Below are a few examples of surgical errors caused by medical malpractice:

• Performing the wrong procedure;
• Performing the procedure incorrectly;
• Giving a patient the wrong blood type;
• Anesthesia overdose;
• Drug errors;
• Operating on the wrong body part; and
• Leaving surgical instruments or sponges inside the patient.

Unfortunately, surgical errors can commonly occur during routine procedures, including colonoscopies, appendectomies, gall bladder surgery, and plastic surgery. In addition, injuries may also occur after the surgery while the patient is recovering as a result of malpractice by nurses, doctors, or other health professionals.

An injury due to a surgical error can have life-altering consequences. If you believe that your physician has committed a surgical error and caused you injury, it is important to speak with an attorney who specializes in this area as soon as possible.

Upon meeting with a medical malpractice attorney, you will be asked to explain what happened in as much detail as possible. It is helpful to bring a copy of your medical records as well. The attorney will then be able to discuss your legal options with you.

The personal injury attorneys of Hyatt & Weber, P.A. understand the potentially devastating impact of a medical mistake. If you or someone you love has been injured due to someone else’s negligence, we are here to help. Our Maryland personal injury attorneys are experienced and dedicated to pursuing the compensation you deserve.

The study, which is published in the October issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology, relied on reports made by the University Health Network in Toronto, Canada spanning from January 2009 to April 2010. To conduct the study, researchers evenly divided the breast-imaging reports into two categories. In one, 307 reports used conventional dictation transcription in which the radiologist dictates the report and a team transcribes and reviews the report. The other 308 reports used automatic speech recognition (ASR) in which the radiologist dictates the report and software immediately transcribes the report onto a computer screen.

Alarmingly, researchers found at least one major error in 23% of ASR reports, as opposed to 4% of conventional dictation transcription reports. Additionally, the error rate was even higher in breast MRI reports (35% of ASR compared with 7% of conventional reports). The lowest error rates occurred in reports of interventional procedures (13% of ASR and 4% of conventional reports) and mammography reports (15% of ASR and no conventional reports).

The study also found that major errors affecting patient care “were often caused by an incorrect unit of measure (millimeter/centimeter) or a missing or added ‘no,’ such as ‘mammographic signs of malignancy’ instead of ‘no mammographic signs of malignancy.’”

Anabel Scaranelo, lead author of the report, said the study’s findings suggest that breast radiologists need to allow additional time for proofreading and review. She also noted that they should probably have a 6- to 12-hour timeframe to look over the notes rather than sending the notes as soon as they are dictated using the speech-recognition software.

“Basically the study’s findings tell us that despite the speed and other benefits that speech-recognition technology provides, it has its flaws, too, and we need to recognize them and find creative solutions to minimize their impact,” Scaranelo told InformationWeek Healthcare. “There is pressure on radiologists to produce breast-imaging reports in the earliest time possible. However, the majority of [exams] are non-urgent exams. In that context, reports for breast imaging need a longer turnaround time to be proofread and edited.”

Source: Information Week

The personal injury attorneys of Hyatt & Weber, P.A. understand the potentially devastating impact of a medical mistake. If you or someone you love has been injured due to someone else’s negligence, we are here to help. Our Maryland personal injury attorneys are experienced and dedicated to pursuing the compensation you deserve.

The most recent FDA recommendation follows an agency report that concluded that vaginal implantation of surgical mesh exposes patients to a number of serious risks, as confirmed by 1,503 adverse-event reports between 2005 and 2007.

Specifically, the review found that erosion of mesh through the vagina is the most common and consistently reported mesh-related complication from transvaginal pelvic organ prolapse surgeries using mesh. Mesh erosion can require multiple surgeries to repair and can be debilitating for some women. In some cases, even multiple surgeries will not resolve the complication.

To further protect patients, the FDA is proposing that mesh products that are inserted through the vagina be moved to the highest-risk, Class III FDA category of medical devices. This requires companies to conduct clinical trials in people and then submit an application seeking FDA approval, similar to the procedure required for drugs.

The mesh products, which are made by several companies including C.R. Bard Inc., Boston Scientific Corp. and Johnson & Johnson, are currently reviewed under the so-called 510(k) process which allows companies to obtain FDA clearance for devices without conducting clinical trials if they can show a product is “substantially equivalent” to a medical device already in use. The system is designed to allow companies to keep updating existing devices without going through a lengthy review process with each change.

While the advisory panel didn’t take a formal vote on whether to reclassify the devices, a majority of the panel of non-FDA medical experts said they supported the agency’s proposal. The FDA isn’t required to follow its panel’s advice but does so in most cases.

Source: Wall Street Journal

The personal injury attorneys of Hyatt & Weber, P.A. understand the potentially devastating impact of a medical mistake. If you or someone you love has been injured due to someone else’s negligence, we are here to help. Our Maryland personal injury attorneys are experienced and dedicated to pursuing the compensation you deserve.