Tennessee Medical Malpractice Case Filings 2010 – Part 4
This is Part 4 of my report on medical malpractice filings in Tennessee for 2010. (Here is Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.) Today, I examine the county where I live, Williamson County.
Williamson County, Tennessee is on the southern border of Davidson County, which is the home of our state capital, Nashville. In 2010 Williamson County had 180,891 residents. Almost 90 percent of those residents were white and about 5% of them were African-American. The average household income was almost $122,000 per year and the per capita annual income was about $42,000. Over 56% of the people in the county have attained at least one college degree.
Williamson Medical Center is a 185-bed hospital in Franklin. It provides comprehensive inpatient and outpatient care. It has an active emergency room and has physicians on-staff in some 36 specialties.
Do Auto Safety Standards Save Lives?
On Tuesday the 26th I posted about a NHTSA report on traffic safety. I saved for today a reference to what the organization believes is a major cause of the decrease in deaths and injuries in motor vehicle cases: safety regulations and programs imposed by state and federal governments.
Here is a summary of the findings on this point:
The long-term declining trend observed in fatalities since reaching a high in the early 1970s has occurred while significant vehicle and occupant safety regulations and programs were being enacted by NHTSA and the States. NHTSA-administered behavioral and vehicle safety programs, both in the crashworthiness and crash avoidance areas, and through the issuing of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards has contributed tremendously to the long-term downward trend seen in motor vehicle traffic crash fatalities. In 2008, an estimated 244 lives were saved by the use of child restraints, 13,250 lives of people 5 and older were saved by seat belts, 2,546 lives of people 13 and older were saved by air bags, 1,829 lives were saved by the use of motorcycle helmets, and 714 lives were saved by minimum-drinking-age laws (NHTSA, 2009). Significant life-saving vehicle technologies like electronic stability control (ESC) have begun to penetrate the vehicle fleet. NHTSA estimates ESC would save 5,300 to 9,600 lives and prevent 156,000 to 238,000 injuries in all types of crashes annually once all light vehicles on the road are equipped with ESC (NHTSA, 2007).
Vehicle Crashes, Death and Injuries Continue to Decline
The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration has issued a report analyzing motor vehicle crash data for 2008. The good news: the number of vehicle crashes, deaths and injuries continue to decline.
From the report:
The number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is the primary exposure measure used when analyzing the occurrence of fatal motor vehicle crashes. VMT is collected by the Federal Highway Administration and in 2008 FHWA reported a decrease in VMT of almost 2 percent from that reported in 2007. This is the first reported decline in VMT since 1980. The number of motor vehicle crash fatalities per 100 million VMT was 1.25 in 2008, which is a decline of approximately 8 percent from the 2007 rate and is the lowest fatality rate per 100 million VMT ever recorded. The estimated number of people injured in crashes continued a long-term decline, dropping by 5.8 percent in 2008.
Cost of Auto Accidents
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that motor vehicle accidents cost the United States economy almost $100 billion each year, or about $500 per licensed driver.
Motorcycle accidents cost about $12 billion. Car and truck accidents total $70 billion.
The CDC looked at data from 2005. In that year, there were 3.7 million injuries and deaths resulting in medical care from motor vehicle accidents.
A Great Tip on Opening Statements
Winning Trial Advocacy Tips is the best trial advocacy blog on the web. Click here to read a recent post from the blog on tips for opening statements.
An excerpt:
In the courtroom, you probably talk in the past tense during opening statements and direct examination because you’re describing events that have already happened and reached finality. You already know the conclusion – but your jury doesn’t. This is the first time they’ve heard about the events. If you want to bring certain areas of your questioning to life, you need to switch your language to the present tense. By switching to the present tense, you’ll help your jury feel that things are happening right now.
How To Help Jurors Remember Important Facts
Winning Trial Advocacy Tips shares another great post – this one called "Sticking Thoughts in Your Jurors’ Brains."
An excerpt:
Repetition helps us remember, but it can also bore us to sleep. As the trial lawyer, your goal is repeat the information often enough that your jury remembers it, but without putting them to sleep. Here’s the good news: You can repeat repeat important information without boring your jurors, just so long as you follow a few simple guidelines.
Brain Trauma – A Lifelong Problem
This new article reveals that traumatic brain injury, currently considered a singular event by the insurance industry and many health care providers, is instead the beginning of an ongoing process that impacts multiple organ systems and may cause or accelerate other diseases and disorders that can reduce life expectancy, according to research from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
Traumatic brain injury occurs when a sudden trauma causes damage to the brain and can be classified as mild, moderate or severe, depending on the extent of the damage. While many patients recover completely, more than 90,000 become disabled each year in the U.S. alone. It is estimated that more than 3.5 million Americans are presently disabled by brain injuries – suffering lifelong conditions as a result.
The literature review, which appears in the current issue of The Journal of Neurotrauma, examines 25 years of research on the effects of brain injury, including its impact on the central nervous system and on cognitive and motor functions.
Important Medicare Subrogation Decision
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has ruled that Medicare is not entitled to rely on its field manual and argue that a subrogation interest be reduced under a "made whole" type of analysis only if a judgment is entered in the case.
In Bradley v. Selbelius, plaintiff settled a wrongful death case for policy limits, $52,500, and put Medicare on notice of the settlement. Medicare asserted a $38,000+ lien, less procurement costs. Plaintiff filed suit in the probate court and asked the court to determine the value of the case and the amount that needed to be re-paid to Medicare. Medicare refused to participate.
The trial judge ruled that the value of the case exceeded $2,500,000 and that Medicare’s reimbursement should be cut to $787.50. Medicare refused to recognize the probate court’s decision, saying that its field manual provided that it need not rely on a court order allocating proceedings unless the court order was based on the merits of the controversy. The estate paid Medicare under protest, exhausted its administrative remedies, and then filed suit in federal court.
NEJM Editor Asks: Is Academic Medicine for Sale?
Those of us who represent victims of medical negligence and dangerous, defective drugs and medical devices know that a significant percentage of so-called "medical research" is nothing more than fodder prepared to help health care providers and doctors win lawsuits or help manufacturer’s reps sell product. All to often, jurors gobble up the phony information, always assuming that no respectable professional would engage in such conduct and no respectable publication would print it.
It appears that Dr. Marcia Angell, MD., the first woman to serve as Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. has the same concerns. In an editorial titled "Is Academic Medicine for Sale?," Angell said as follows:
What is wrong with the current situation? Why shouldn’t clinical researchers have close ties to industry? One obvious concern is that these ties will bias research, both the kind of work that is done and the way it is reported. Researchers might undertake studies on the basis of whether they can get industry funding, not whether the studies are scientifically important. That would mean more research on drugs and devices and less designed to gain insights into the causes and mechanisms of disease. It would also skew research toward finding trivial differences between drugs, because those differences can be exploited for marketing. Of even greater concern is the possibility that financial ties may influence the outcome of research studies.