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TEXAS MEDICAL DREAM TEAM: Invitation Number 3, The surgical team that flunked anatomy 101

By Steve Lombardi

Jordan Santana is only 15 but he knows a lot more about anatomy than does the surgical team that operated on the wrong finger. Being a Boston Red Sox fan this New York minute seems pretty A-Rod-ish to me.

So join me today as Texas sends out invitation number 3 to the New York surgeon and surgical team that flunked anatomy 101 by operating on the wrong finger.

'An internal investigation into the mistake revealed that when a scrub nurse found out what had happened, she felt unwell and then fainted.

The inquiry concluded that staff had failed to follow pre-operative procedures, including marking the operation site adequately beforehand.'

Hey what are you going to do, they all look the same? Anyway it doesn' t matter if as a surgeon you can tell the difference between an index finger and toe because in Texas the legislature has passed on insuring medical mistakes to the patient. If you doubt me just read about Dave Fitzgerald, the man whose arms and legs were amputated and tort reform saved the hospital from financial responsibility by limiting Mr. Fitzgerald's quality of life damages.

Stepping on the Little Guy: Dallas worker loses all four limbs, is awarded $17.7 million; well, almost, but not quite.

Texas Tort Reform Message – Go west young man; go east or north, but go.

Professional mistakes that injure clients and patients are normally absorbed by insurance premiums; in other words professionals take responsibility for the damage they cause. But not so in Texas. I Texas you can have your cake and eat it too. As a medical service provider the legislature has allowed the medical profession to duck and let the patient take the punch. As a medical service provider the patient is now required to insure their quality of life damages. And if the patient hasn't insured quality of life, when a medical mistake is made, it's tough luck for the patient.

Today many of you patients will say I'm just a greedy lawyer trying to feather my own financial nest. And you have every right to say that because I do earn my living from personal injury litigation. But I'm not saying this today to make more money, because for one I don't live in Texas or practice there. And two I have other ways I earn a living; the practice of law is only one of them. The reason why I'm taking the time to blog about this subject is because I'm tired; tired of listening to injured clients say if they'd only known what tort reform really meant and how it would affect them they would have spoken up sooner.

You see I better than most know what it's like to grow up without a father. That affected the quality of my upbringing; the quality of my mother's life. And when the legislature passes laws allowing those responsible for the death or maiming of a patient to escape from financial responsibility, it slams the courthouse doors in the face of the injured person who needs justice.

It may someday be you sitting in a lawyer's office asking what they can do for you. And the lawyer will say, "Nothing. Tort reform took your rights away a long time ago. Where were you when they were doing tort reform?" And at that very moment as the blood rushes to your ear drums and the rush of anger turns helplessly inside of you, then this poem named They Thought They Were Free, by Martin Niemoller will make sense to you. Then and only then, will most of you appreciate what he was talking about. Tort reform was not applied to my family when the pulled muscle turned out to be cancer and my father's life was cut terminally short leaving my mother alone to raise five children. She choose not to do anything legally, but that was her choice and tort reform legislation takes that choice away from the patient; it leaves the patient with no options but suffer deep in debt, poor and alone and barely surviving. If you have to raise a family that way it's just too bad. So as you encourage your political representative to reform more rights by taking away someone else's rights to seek compensation for injury think of this poem. Just remember to insert your own name at the end.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

Then they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on March 20, 2009 (boomark / email).