Category: Medical & Healthcare Hospitalists throughout the Years: Growth of a Specialty...and Its Problems TASA ID: 3333 In the early 1990s, Americans started seeing a new type of doctor who spent all of his or her work hours in the hospital and never went to an office. Pediatricians, family practitioners and internists were the first to divide themselves into those doing outpatient care and "hospitalists." The original incentive for the change was simple efficiency: hospital rounds take primary care doctors away from more-lucrative office visits, and a doctor who spends all day at the hospital knows the way around and can serve patients faster. Doctors who got tired of driving from office to hospital and back were happy to have their sickest patients seen by somebody else; doctors fresh out of training, on the other hand, generally know little about managing an office but are very comfortable in the hospital environment. Read more
Category: Medical & Healthcare Lessons from a Doctor's Recent Trial Testimony TASA ID: 3656 Recently, I testified as a plaintiff internal medicine expert in a trial located in California, against a primary care doctor. This was a missed breast cancer diagnosis case, where the jury awarded a $1.9 million verdict. The jury was hung against the radiology group, despite the fact that they sent her the wrong letter in which she was congratulated on a normal mammogram, when in fact it showed suspicious breast calcifications. Read more
Category: Medical & Healthcare, Personal Injury Medical Spas Acting Beyond Their Expertise: Adverse Complications Resulting in Potential Litigation TASA ID: 3797 The very term "medi-spa" or "medical spa" raises a conundrum which the industry does not want to address. Is this a medical facility which, therefore, should meet the standard of care expected of physicians? Is this a spa facility which conjures expectations of a pampered experience consisting of massage, nourishment, meditation and the like? Or is this a combination of the two? Read more
Category: Personal Injury Dog Bite Cases TASA ID: 1218 There are about five million dog bites reported each year in the United State . . . Those reported dog bites are likely a very small percentage of dog bites that actually occurred . . . In some states a prior history of aggressive or biting behavior must be established before pursuing liability beyond medical claims. It is important to ask the right questions, and it is not always the best timing to bring in an expert after the depositions have been taken. Read more
Category: Employment, Personal Injury Transferability of Skills Analysis: Use in RTW TASA ID: 540 Generally speaking, it does not matter what job the employee is returned to as long as they are 'making' close to their pre-injury wage. If, for some reason, the injured employee cannot return to work or cannot earn as much as they were before the injury. . . Read more
