Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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On Feb. 13, 2008, Richard Potrawski was taken by ambulance to Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park, Ill., after suffering a head injury during a slip and fall on ice.  Mr. Potrawski was brought to the emergency room at 12:30 pm.  He had a large contusion above his right eye and a medical history of congestive heart failure as well as atrial fibrillation for which he was taking Coumadin, a blood thinner.

Mr. Potrawski had the potential for a brain bleed, but the defendant ER physician, Dr. Melissa Uribes ordered a CT scan which was done at 2:30 pm.  A scan revealed a 1-cm left-sided subdural hematoma.

Little Company of Mary Hospital did not have a neurosurgeon on staff, so Dr. Uribes took steps to find a hospital with neurosurgical services that would admit Mr. Potrawski. 

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Virginia Gettys was admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Highland, Ill., with abdominal pain, abdominal distension and a report of bloody stools. This followed a recent colonoscopy. Gettys was admitted to the hospital on Jan. 14, 2004. 

The defendant, Dr. Jose Diaz, a general surgeon, performed an exploratory laparotomy to see the cause of Gettys’ symptoms. Dr. Diaz found nothing wrong. 

Gettys, 43, was transferred to another hospital where she died just four days later. She was survived by her husband and children.

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In a 9th Circuit decision handed down in January 2013, the court of appeals found that the Medical Device Amendments (MDA) to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act were not a wedge to prevent a plaintiff from making a state negligence claim against Medtronic. In a series of previous cases dating back to 2008, defendants, manufacturers and distributors of medical devices were armed with preemption defenses as a result of the cases of Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc. and bolstered by Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal.  Because of the conflicts in the different U.S. Circuit Courts, there is a good possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up these cases to clarify this litigation and rectify the conflict in the districts.

In the Stengel v. Medtronic case, the 9th Circuit held that the plaintiff’s claim of state law negligence for the defendant’s choosing not to report known risks of its product to the FDA, was not expressly nor impliedly preempted by the Medical Device Amendments to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.

In the Stengel case, Stengel had a Medtronic pump implanted in his abdomen to control pain he had in his back. Unfortunately, an inflammatory mass formed at the tip of the pump’s catheter that caused permanent paraplegia. 

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A confidential settlement was reached with a hospital emergency room and doctors after a 58-year-old man underwent emergency surgery. The man went to the hospital emergency room after dislocating his hip prosthesis. During the emergency surgery, the attending anesthesiologist attempted unsuccessfully to place an endotracheal tube. 

The man, Doe, required an emergency tracheotomy.

Doe suffered oxygen loss resulting in a hypoxia brain injury because of the lack of oxygen. After being removed from life support, Doe was transferred to hospice where he later died. Doe was survived by his wife and two adult children.

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Continuity of care is paramount in patient healthcare. The goal is always to give the patient the best medical care while at the same time reduce medical errors. For the last 20 years hospitals and physicians have been using electronic health records (EHR).

Although the intent was noble, EHR has caused serious and even catastrophic injury and harm to patients because of poorly written software programs for healthcare providers. Sometimes the medical recording software does not allow for certain medical conditions, treatments and tests. In those cases, the medical providers simply use the drop down or other shortcut to comply with the entry requirements.

It used to be that narrative nursing notes would be important in providing details of patient care. But in most hospital settings, nurses simply use default screens on a computer to make their entries. Physicians often are not able to read the nurses’ remarks or notes. 

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On July 8, 2013, the U.S. District Court in Charleston, W.Va., started the first bellwether jury trial in the C.R. Bard, Inc. Multidistrict Litigation (MDL). Bard manufactures transvaginal mesh products. Not long after the beginning of the trial, the trial judge declared a mistrial. After opening statements and the testimony of at least one witness, a physician then testified inadvertently that the manufacturer (Bard) was no longer selling this type of mesh product, which was at issue in the case.

The court declared the mistrial because the testimony violated a pretrial order that prohibited evidence of a subsequent remedial measure. The case was restarted again in mid-August, but this time the jury returned a $2 million verdict for the injuries suffered by Donna Cisson, a public-health nurse from Georgia. She received the Bard Avaulta Plus implant in 2009. Jurors deliberated for 12 hours over two days before reaching their verdict. The vaginal mesh implant is made by Bard. Bard’s attorneys have said on the record that the company intends to appeal the verdict ($250,000 in compensatory damages and $1.75 million in punitive damages), which they say was wrong because Cisson’s injuries were not caused by Bard’s product.    

The transvaginal mesh products are used in surgical procedures to repair conditions in women that have pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence. Bard has removed its Avaulta Plus implant product off the market in 2012 after the FDA ordered that all makers of these implant products review reports of organ damage, infection and pain during sex.

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The Illinois Supreme Court has reversed an Illinois Appellate Court ruling concluding that Section 3.150(a) of the Emergency Medical Services Systems Act immunizes an ambulance driver in a non-emergency transfer of a patient. 

According to the Act, Section 3.150(a), “Any person . . . certified, licensed or authorized pursuant to this act or rules thereunder, who in good faith provides emergency or non emergency medical services . . . in the normal course of conducting their duties, or in an emergency, shall not be civilly liable as a result of their acts or omissions in providing such services unless such acts or omissions . . . constitute willful and wanton misconduct.”

In this case, the plaintiff, Karen Wilkins, sued Rhonda Williams for the injuries she sustained in Oak Lawn, Ill., when she was in an ambulance that crashed into her car. The ambulance was proceeding during a routine, nonemergency transfer of a patient from a hospital to a nursing home. The lawsuit alleged that the driver, Rhonda Williams, and her employer, Superior Air Ground Ambulance Service, were negligent. The defendants moved for summary judgment based on the Emergency Medical Services System Act.

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On June 22, 2006, Raymone Bowe, a 10-year-old boy, was brought by his mother to the emergency department at Norwegian American Hospital in Chicago with a sore throat, headache and a history of fever and vomiting. Raymone was seen in the ER by the defendant, Dr. Joseph Mejia, an occupational medicine/ophthalmology physician. 

Dr. Mejia diagnosed flu and headache and discharged Raymone with instructions to follow up if his symptoms continued or got worse. Two days later, at 12:19 a.m. on June 24, 2006, Raymone’s mother brought him to the emergency department at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County. She reported that Raymone had  3 days of diarrhea, vomiting and fever. The complete blood count showed Raymone had an elevated white blood count, but he was still discharged with a diagnosis of a viral syndrome. Later that  day, Raymone was taken to Children’s Memorial Hospital, where he was diagnosed with Streptococcus pneumoniae meningitis. Raymone was admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit. 

Because of the delay in treating the meningitis, Raymone sustained complete and permanent hearing loss in both ears resulting in surgeries to insert bilateral cochlear implants. 

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Jungie Kim underwent surgery to repair an abdominal aortic aneurysm at Rush Northshore Medical Center on Sept. 24, 2003.  Kim was a 55-year-old housewife.  The surgery was done by a vascular surgeon, Dr. Douglas Norman, a contracted employee at Rush Northshore. 

Following the surgery, Ms. Kim experienced severe ischemia in her right foot. Several more surgical procedures were performed.  There was the development of compartment syndrome pressure in a muscle compartment, which can cause muscle and nerve damages because of decreased blood flow.

In spite of the right foot surgeries, Ms. Kim’s foot became gangrenous, which eventually led to an amputation of the forefoot in April 2004.

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The U.S. Department of Labor reports that in 2008 only 12% of doctors were self-employed. With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and other healthcare reforms, the future of employment by physicians in hospitals will be overtaking the past trends. Hospital employment of doctors is expected to increase between 10 and 25% over the next five years. 

At the same time that employment of doctors is increasing in hospitals, the numbers of physicians practicing on their own is declining. This data comes from the Physician Compensation and Production Survey from the Medical Group Management Association (2003-2009) report. According to that report, physician-owned practices declined from 70% in 2002 to just under 50% by the year 2008.  In contrast, by 2008, hospital ownership of physician practices exceeded the percentage of physician practice sowned by physicians.  Hospital ownership of physician practices in 2002 was only slightly more than 20%.

Back in the 1990s, hospitals and health systems were employing primary care physicians more so than medical specialists because it was thought that the healthcare model of the future would ensure that primary care physicians would be gatekeepers to health care. Because of reform and the ACA, that trend has changed.  The rate of increase in employment of primary care physicians by hospitals and specialists is about equal now.  That is because the ACA does not promote a primary care gatekeeper model. The lowest cost resource at the earliest point of medical care means that specialists will be directed to the patient instead of through the primary care physician.

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