Medical Malpractice

• University Medical Center Does Deal with Cancer Institute

  Steve Klearman | November 28, 2007 12:11 PM | 0 CommentsReno, NV

  Las Vegas' University Medical Center would shed some controversy, save $290,000 a year and gain prestige in a new deal with the Nevada Cancer Institute. The hospital would pay the research center $60,000 annually to direct its oncology-hematology department under a three-year contract that's expected to be approved today by Clark County commissioners. Marshall Allen, at the Las Vegas Sun...

• Nevada Hospital Managers Face Theft Charges

  Steve Klearman | November 27, 2007 12:07 PM | 0 CommentsReno, NV

  Two managers at Clark County's financially struggling public hospital face criminal charges on accusations of bilking taxpayers out of thousands of dollars by stealing materials and enlisting hospital employees for their personal use, according to court documents. Tony Cook, writing for the Las Vegas Sun yesterday, writes that Christopher Roth, an associate administrator of support services who...

• Pregnant Women Get More Imaging Exams

  Steve Klearman | November 27, 2007 6:16 AM | 0 CommentsReno, NV

  Pregnant women are receiving more high-tech imaging exams, exposing their babies to higher doses of radiation than a decade ago, a study said on Tuesday. Reuters reports that while the levels of radiation exposure are low, they carry a slight risk of harm to the developing fetus, said study author Elizabeth Lazarus, a professor of diagnostic imaging at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at...

• Judge Uncaps Med Mal Caps

  Steve Klearman | November 25, 2007 3:43 PM | 0 CommentsReno, NV

  It's always nice to see Courts take sane approaches to the insurance industry's ongoing efforts to eliminate medical malpractice as a legal claim in America.In a November 14, 2007 article, the Chicago Tribune notes that the "controversy over limits on medical malpractice awards was ignited again after a Cook County judge on Tuesday struck down a 2-year-old state law that capped compensation to...

• Enslaved Foreign Doctors in the Nevada Outback

  Steve Klearman | November 15, 2007 7:53 AM | 0 CommentsReno, NV

  A Reno pediatrician has told state lawmakers that a federal program designed to bring physicians to underserved areas of Nevada has resulted in "indentured servitude" for some of the foreign doctors.Frank Mullen, reporting for the Reno Gazette Journal on Tuesday, writes that:From 2001 until August 2006, Dr. Shaji Mathew was part of the J-1 program, in which Nevada doctors sponsor physicians from...

• First Cloned Monkey Announced

  Steve Klearman | November 14, 2007 7:43 AM | 0 CommentsReno, NV

  Scientists in the U.S. announced today in the journal Nature that they had created the first cloned monkey utilizing the same cloning techniques that brought us Dolly the Sheep (is Dolly still kickin'?) and other engineered animals including mice, pigs, cats, cows and dogs. The monkey is a rhesus macaque and was created (as I understand) from the cloned embryos of numerous rhesus macaque...

• Nevada Alternative Medicine Doctor Fined

  Steve Klearman | November 13, 2007 8:00 AM | 0 CommentsReno, NV

  According to a Las Vegas Review Journal article, a physician and alternative medicine doctor in Carson City, Frank Shallenberger, entered a guilty plea admitting to malpractice for failure to diagnosis colon cancer in one of his patients. This misdiagnosis ultimately lead to the patient's death. The doctor never performed any tests or examinations after the patient complained of symptoms of...

• Medical Malpractice Reform Does Not Deliver in Texas

  Steve Klearman | November 08, 2007 1:13 PM | 0 CommentsReno, NV

  Rural Texas is still waiting for the doctors tort reform was supposed to deliver. This comes from the American Association of Justice quoting Suzanne Batchelor writing for the Texas Observer:The flood of beguiling baby photographs began cascading into mailboxes across Texas as the 2003 fall election drew near. Gracing the cover of a slick brochure, the infant smiled as a stethoscope--held by an...

• Doctors Protest Health Insurer Deal

  Steve Klearman | November 02, 2007 1:06 PM | 0 CommentsReno, NV

  CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) -- While state regulators have approved UnitedHealth Group's $2.6 billion purchase of Sierra Health Services Inc., Nevada's largest health insurer, the American Medical Association continued its fight against the deal during a congressional hearing Thursday.The AMA's immediate past president, Dr. William Plested, asked the House Committee on Small Business to urge the...

• Rapid Treatment of TIA Reduces Major Stroke Risk

  Steve Klearman | November 01, 2007 1:00 PM | 0 CommentsReno, NV

  From D. Garth Sullivan at Indox Consulting:Rapid assessment and treatment of a first transient ischemic attack (TIA) or minor ischemic stroke dramatically reduces risk for subsequent major stroke.Two separate studies - one in the Lancet and the other in Lancet Neurology - show that such an approach reduces recurrent stroke risk by about 80%.Initially presented in June 2007 at the 16th European...