Northern Virginia and Washington D.C. Medical Malpractice and Personal Injury Lawyers’ Blog

Promising Lead in the Possible Cure of Spinal Cord Injuries

The use of folate may be a promising new development in the treatment of spinal cord injuries. Spinal cord injuries are currently incurable. If you’ve suffered a spinal cord injury due to someone else’s negligence, please contact the experienced Washington D.C. and Virginia spinal-cord injury lawyers of Shevlin Smith.

Is The FDA Doing Its Best To Protect American Citizens From The Risks Of Drug Medications?

Avandia is a diabetes drug designed to lower a diabetic's blood sugar and kept it under control. As such, one of its aims is to protect against the risks of uncontrolled diabetes, including the risk of heart disease.  The drug is made by GlaxoSmithKline.

Ironically, in May, reports began to surface that instead of protecting diabetics from heart disease, Avandia was actually having the opposite effect.  A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the use of Avandia increased a patient's risk of heart attacks. Another more recent study published in the Journal of American Medical Association found similar risks to patients, noting that the use of the drug doubled the risks of heart failure and raised the risks of heart attack by 42 percent.

A number of physicians have called for the withdrawal of Avandia from the market.  A safety scientist at the Food and Drug Administration joined in that call arguing that Avandia's toxic effects on the heart had caused up to 205,000 heart attacks and strokes, some fatal, from 1999 to 2006.  Regardless, the Food and Drug Administration overwhelming voted otherwise.  Instead, the FDA has required GlaxoSmithKline to place strict warnings on Avantia labels. 

Of particular interest, FDA officials have admitted that GlaxoSmithKline told the agency about heart risks nearly two years ago but that because of internal disagreements, it never warned patients.  

This, of course, leads to the question is the FDA really doing everything within its power to help protect the American public?

FDA acknowledges loophole that allows non-FDA approved drugs to be prescribed by health care providers

CNN reports that doctors write approximately 65 million prescriptions for drugs not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the federal agency that regulates prescription drugs. These drugs slip through a "black hole" in the drug approval system, whereby the FDA provides the drugs with an identification number to track the drug the regulatory process but that identification number is then used by pharmacies and health care providers to order the drugs for patient use. Because the drugs have an identification number, pharmacies and health care providers mistakenly believe the drugs have been approved by the FDA even though they have not. According to the CNN article, the FDA has known about the existence of this "black hole" for over four decades, but has failed to address it. Perhaps even more shocking, the FDA refuses to identify for the public the drugs that have slipped into this "black hole" despite knowing the identity of such drugs. The result is that the public continues to be at risk. Click here to read the CNN article in full.

Study Finds Type Of Health Care Inusrance Affects The Quality Of Care Patients Receive

A recent New York study found a significant difference in the treatment received by patients based upon the type of health insurance coverage carried by the patient. The authors, who were from the Weil Cornell Medical Center in New York, examined treatment offered to patients suffering from an appendicitis. They found that patients who had health insurance through Medicare or Medicare were 14% and 22% more likely to suffer a ruptured appendix due to a delay in the performance of surgery as compared to patients who had private insurance. They also found that patients who had no health insurance were 18% more likely to suffer a ruptured appendix than patients who had private insurance. The differences persisted even after controlling for age, sex, socioeconomic status, type of hospital and other factors. The authors' findings were published last month in The Journal of the American College of Surgeons and were also recently published in the New York Times. Click here to read the New York Times article.

Are Insurance Companies Shedding Their Role As Risk-Bearers In An Effort To Become Profitable Financial Institutions?

There have been numerous news headlines documenting the record profits being earned by insurance companies in recent years. These record profits come on the heels of many natural disasters such as Hurricane Katarina and California forest fires, in which many policy holders are being denied coverage or being offered less than full value for their replacement costs. Click here to review a detailed article recently published in the Biloxi Sun Herald discussing this issue. Given the record profits being earned by insurance companies, do you believe that they are failing to meet their obligation to bear the risk for the losses of its insureds? Do you believe that these profits are coming at the expense of insureds whose claims are being unjustly denied or undervalued?

Frivilous Lawsuits Myth Debunked

Every year around this time, media outlets across America and the world get their laughs at "this year's" Stella Awards. The Stella Awards are a list of the year's seven "most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S." For anyone who has cared to check, this year's seven cases are repeats of years past. Worse, as it turns out, the cases are fictional. Rick Casey, a journalist from the Houston Chronicle, exposes the myth behind these cases in his article "Incredible Lawsuit Tales." In addition to exposing the myth behind the Stella Awards, Mr. Casey explains away many of the misconceptions behind the McDonald's coffee cup case that has led many Americans to believe (wrongly) that our civil justice system is flawed. Mr. Casey leaves us with an important reminder: "The next time an Internet tale makes you think things are even worse than you thought, check it out. Especially when the tale suggests that the American system is stacked against wealthy corporations."

New Harvard Study Deals Another Blow To Tort Reform Advocates

A new study from Harvard Medical School Researchers at Cambridge Health Alliance has found that the waiting time for patients seeking emergency care is getting longer each year. The study examined the time between patients' arrivals in the emergency department (ED) and when they were first seen by a doctor, and found that the average wait tme increased 36% from 1997 to 2004. Some additional findings of significance in the study are: (1) patients needing emergent care waited even longer - waiting on average 40% longer in 2004 than in 1997. (2) patients suffering from heart attacks waited even longer still -- on average 150% longer in 2004 than in 1997. (3) the increased delays affected everyone, including those with and without health insurance, and people from all racial and ethnic groups. The authors noted that "prolonged ED waits have serious implications for the quality of care." When treatment is delayed, particularly for severely ill patients such as those suffering from heart attacks, patient recovery and survivability is adversely affected. Of note, the study did not find that medical malpractice claims were a factor in the reduction of quality of care at Emergency Departments, nor did it advocate the need for tort reform measures as a solution to the reduced quality of care. As such, the study is yet another blow to tort reform advocates who blame medical malpractice litigation for the poor quality of care received by Americans. A link to the new study can be found at http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.27.2.w84/DC1

It Is The Insurance Industry That Is In Dire Need Of Reform

The American Association for Justice recently published a report entitled "The Ten Worst Insurance Companies in America." The report identifies some pretty staggering figures relating to the profits made by the insurance industry over the last ten years. For example, the report states that "over the last 10 years, the property/casualty insurance industry has enjoyed average profits of over $30 billion a year." The report further states that "the life and health side of the insurance industry has averaged another $30 billion." It deserves special emphasis that these figures are the profits earned by the insurance industry.

The report also notes that the U.S. insurance industry takes in "over $1 trillion in premiums annually" and has "$3.8 trillion in assets." This later figure is more than the GDPs of all but two countries in the world.

Given these figures, it is hard to argue against the fact that the insurance industry is doing quite well. Yet, in comparison, how are policyholders doing? Many of us are aware that health care providers are complaining that the rising cost of their medical malpractice insurance premiums. Most of us know that our health insurance premiums continue to rise. Those who have had the misfortune of being victims of a natural disaster, such as Hurrican Katrina, know that our insurance companies often fight us by denying claims rather than help us recover.

Proponents for tort reform often advocate for changes in our civil justice system in an effort to stem the rise in insurance premiums. They argue that restricting the right of Americans to bring lawsuits, or arbitrarily limiting the amount of recovery by persons injured due to the negligence of others, will best effectuate such an end. Of course, there is little evidence to support such claims. Perhaps it is time that different questions are asked. For example, why do insurance companies continue to raise premiums when they are earning record profits? Why do insurance companies continue to emphasize profits over fair dealing with their policyholders?