Being sick or injured is an intimidating experience, and placing your life in the hands of doctors is not only scary but can also be dangerous. Medical doctors in specialty training (residents) routinely work 80-hour weeks. Now, there are efforts to unionize these residents to improve working conditions. Will it also lead to better patient outcomes?

As a medical malpractice attorney, I see troubling errors by doctors who move too quickly and don’t read the patient’s chart carefully (or at all) or who are spread too thin and don’t take the time to truly listen to their patients… ...

Hospital ownership should not affect a patient’s potential outcomes after admission. However, a study of 51 hospitals’ data shows that private equity investment has been associated with a significant increase in adverse events among Medicare patients during treatment at those facilities.

According to research by Dr. Zirui Song from Harvard and Joseph Dov Bruch from the University of Chicago, hospitals owned by private equity firms between 2009 and 2019 experienced the following outcomes:

• a 25% increase in surgical infections and bed sores;
• 38% more central line ...

While a child’s birth should be among the happiest days of a parent’s life, the possibility of a birth injury can cause major concern. Birth injuries happen not only at delivery; they can occur before, during and even after the baby arrives. If you are worried about potential issues for your child at any point in the birthing process, there are significant and vital steps to take:

• Document everything: The video of your child’s birth can be more than a memento. Video, photos and other forms of documentation will capture key moments before, during and after the birth. Parents should ...

When people go to a hospital, they assume the medical professionals there will treat their illnesses skillfully, and they will return home in better health than before they left.

Sadly, this is not always the case. In fact, sometimes patients not only leave with new ailments and must be readmitted, but an unfortunate number die from their hospitalization.

According to a 2010 government study, published by Consumer Reports, “mistakes and other medical harm contribute to an estimated 15,000 deaths each month. And that’s just among Medicare patients.”

The nonprofit ...

Imagine that you’re about to undergo a surgical procedure. You’re anesthetized, but you feel confident because you’ve put yourself in the hands of a doctor you believe you can trust. Furthermore, the hospital where your procedure is taking place has state-of-the-art technology equipment.

What you don’t see is that the computer screen your physician and attending nurses are focused on is one for their own personal use. Examples include a doctor who makes personal calls on his smartphone during a procedure and a nurse checking airfares during surgery on her iPad or even ...

If you are in an accident and suffer a personal injury, the last thing you need to worry about is the credentials of the physician caring for you. That’s why we were pleased to learn that Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has signed the Patients’ Right To Know Act into law.

Under the new law, Illinois consumers will soon have access to an in-depth history of doctors, including whether they have been fired, convicted of a crime or have made a medical malpractice payment in the last five years.

For more than a decade, doctors’ groups blocked that bill -- until ...

• Medical malpractice has no place in the healthcare debate. Healthcare reform is about making sure that every American has access to quality, low-cost healthcare, not about limiting the legal rights of innocent patients harmed by medical negligence.
• Tort reform does not improve the quality of our healthcare system or produce cost savings. Forty-eight states have already enacted at least one medical malpractice tort reform measure. Yet, these legal restrictions have done nothing to improve our health care system—forty seven million Americans still have no health care, costs ...