Follow us on:

Medical error can have devastating effects. Here, in their own words, Connecticut families tell the stories of how medical error changed their lives forever.

Brian Reich

Five years ago Sydney was born. Because of poor judgment she was born with cerebral palsy.

Sydney has been deprived of many of the activities that are experienced by other children. Sydney has yet to enjoy and probably will not ever enjoy any individual activity and pleasures that we all take for granted. She cannot dress herself; she cannot walk by herself, she cannot feed or communicate very well; she cannot brush her own teeth or bathe herself and she cannot even go to the potty by herself.

On the other hand, she gets to participate in many activities that children with normal physical development don't experience. Sydney gets to have two hours every week of speech therapy, two hours each week of physical therapy; two hours each week of occupational therapy and 45 minutes of aqua therapy and another hour of hippotherapy.

If Sydney were to be compensated for her loss of play time, family time and school time at a modest $10.00 an hour, her total lifetime compensation would be more than the proposed cap and that's only a very small part of her pain and suffering.

I do not believe that there is a limit on the amount that is due to an individual that has been put into a prison within their own body or has suffered other permanent injury due to the negligence of a medical professional. I do believe that the insurance companies have done a great job in playing the doctors against the injured patient. They get to enjoy their profits and generous salaries at the expense of the physician or the injured.

Recently, many doctors have said that they have been forced into early retirement due to rising insurance premiums. In my industry, trucking, I have seen many trucking companies close operations due to exorbitant insurance increases. Just four years ago the average yearly premium per truck was about $4,500 and today that premium is about $10,000 - a 220% increase.

Yet 15 of the top 25 paid executives in the Hartford area are in the insurance industry with 2002 compensations of up to $9.58 million with an average increase of 149% in only one year. The insurance industry is the ultimate beneficiary while both permanently injured patients and good doctors are being financially penalized.


Newsletter

Did you miss an issue of our online newsletter? You can access past newsletter issues or you can receive future newsletters via email by joining our mailing list.

Health Care Blog

Three Vaccines for Fall: What You Need to Know
According to the NY Times, here’s who should get the flu, Covid and R.S.V. vaccines, and when. By Ap…
Continue Reading »

How the Inflation Reduction Act Reduces Health Care Costs
CAP American Progress ARTICLE AUG 12, 2022  Nicole Rapfogel & Emily Gee The Inflation Reduction …
Continue Reading »

Hospital Visitation Restrictions Are Hurting Patients and Nurses — New protocols and COVID mitigation techniques can enable safe visitation
Medpage Today |  by Karen Cox, PhD, RN, and Tejal K. Gandhi, MD, MPH September 2, 2021 As COVID…
Continue Reading »


Becoming a More Empowered Patient

First, we have chosen to share a video by Consumer Health Choices: Talking With Your Doctor. In it you will see how preparing for you appointment can make a difference.

We have chosen a second video by the National Patient Safety Foundation: AskMe3, to share with you. Here, you learn that there are three important questions to ask your doctor whenever you see him or her.

Finally, we are sharing a series of videos by Dartmouth-Hitchcock:
Self-Advocacy: The Empowered Patient,
Self-Advocacy: Preparing for your Visit,
Self-Advocacy: Why It's Important To Share and
Self-Advocacy: Doing Research.

For the complete story, please click here

5 Things to Know

  1. What you need to know in the Hospital
  2. 15 Steps You Can Take To Reduce Your Risk of a Hospital Infection
  3. Selecting Doctors & Hospitals
  4. What to do to avoid medication error
  5. AHRQ Director Helps Consumers Navigate the Health Care System in a New Advice Column on the Web

You've Suffered Medical Harm - Now What Do You Do?

According to a recent article published by ProPublica titled: So You’ve Become a Patient Safety Statistic – Now What? by Marshall Allen there are six things to do….

  1. Get a copy of medical records.
  2. Make sure the incident is reported internally.
  3. If the patient has died, order a forensic autopsy.
  4. Consider calling an attorney.
  5. Meet with the doctor and hospital officials.
  6. Report the incident to regulators, who can investigate.

For greater detail and more important information, please read the full article.