Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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In a Cook County medical malpractice lawsuit, a patient’s surviving family members filed a medical negligence lawsuit claiming that the doctor had misdiagnosed the patient’s disease and elected not to properly treat it. However, a jury found in favor of the defendant doctor after determining that the doctor’s actions did not directly cause the patient’s death in The Estate of D.W., deceased, et al. v. Dr. Lee, Midwest Surgery, S.C., 11 L 79.

The decedent first met the defendant doctor after being admitted to Sherman Hospital with complaints of chest and abdominal pain in April 2003. Dr. Lee, a general surgeon, was brought in on consult after a CT scan did not return any clear or obvious cause for the patient’s pain; the CT scan only showed the presence of free air.
After reviewing the patient’s medical history, the doctors concluded that the pain was likely caused by a perforated duodenal ulcer located near the patient’s small intestine. Dr. Lee performed an emergency surgery to repair the perforated ulcer. A little over three weeks later, the patient was discharged from Sherman Hospital with orders to follow up with Dr. Lee in four days.

Everything seemed to be going well, until December 2003 when the patient returned to Sherman Hospital, this time with a diagnosis of cholecystitis and cholelithiasis, i.e. a bladder infection and gallstones. Once again, Dr. Lee was called as a consultant and ended up performing the surgery to remove the patient’s gallbladder. He was then discharged just four days after presenting to the hospital and was again instructed to follow up with Dr. Lee.

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A Cook County jury returned a $5.1 million verdict in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against a city and its paramedics. The case had initially been dismissed on the basis that the city was immune from such claims. However, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed that ruling and held that the city and its paramedics could be tried under the Illinois Emergency Medical Services Act.

The Illinois wrongful death lawsuit involved a 16 year-old Park Ridge teen whose parents had called 911 after he was found unconscious during the early morning hours. However, by the time the paramedics arrived, the teen was conscious and breathing. While there was later some debate as to whether or not the family denied the need for further services at that time, the end result was that the paramedics left without doing a full assessment of the teen’s condition. Several hours later, his condition further deteriorated and another 911 call was made. However, this time the paramedics did not arrive in time and the teen ended up dying of a drug overdose.

As a result of the teen’s death, the family filed a lawsuit against the City of Park Ridge in which it alleged that its paramedics acted willfully and wantonly by choosing to not correctly assess the extent of the teen’s medical condition. The family maintained that at the time of the first 911 call that the teen should have been transported to a nearby hospital for further treatment.

The courts dismissed the claim after finding that the City of Park Ridge was immune under the Illinois Tort Immunity Act. The Immunity Act bars any liability against a local public entity for failure to evaluate, diagnose or prescribe treatment for an illness or physical condition. Therefore, the City of Park Ridge could not be held responsible for any of its employee’s failure to properly diagnose and treat patients.
The teen’s family appealed this decision to the Illinois Appellate Court, where it was affirmed. However, when it arrived before the Illinois Supreme Court, the decision was reversed on the finding that the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Act was the controlling law and not the Tort Immunity Act. The case was then remanded to the trial court for further handling.

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Doctors and nurses have a responsibility to advocate for their patients and to exercise due diligence in making sure their patients’ needs are being met. That responsibility increases when the patients cannot speak on their own behalf, e.g. when the patient is a child, in a coma, or perhaps a stroke victim. This issue of nurse and doctor responsibility was at the center of a recent Kentucky nursing home abuse lawsuit involving an elderly resident’s injury at a Louisville nursing home.

The patient was an elderly resident who was in the Kentucky nursing home after a stroke left him with decreased mobility. As part of his care and treatment, doctors had instituted a policy that required the Treyton Oak Towers nursing staff to use a lift and two staff members to transfer the resident in and out of his wheelchair. Typically, care plans like this are put into place to help reduce the risk of falls and injuries.

However, in this nursing home abuse case the nursing staff chose not to follow the transferring plan. Instead, just one staff member attempted to move the resident from his wheelchair to his bed. The staff member of course dropped the resident, fracturing both of his legs. Yet rather than telling someone, the staff member simply put the resident back into his bed as if the fall had never happened. And since the resident’s stroke left him unable to tell anyone else about the fall, his fractures also went undiagnosed. It was not until the resident was transferred to a hospital that his fractures were diagnosed and treated. The resident died just two months after the fall.

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Since the first successful kidney transplant in the 1950s, organ donation has given many patients a new lease on life. In the US alone, over 100,000 people are currently waiting for an organ donation, with a new person being added to the list every ten minutes. However, the biggest barrier for many of those on the organ transplant list is not a lack of medical technology, but rather a lack of available organs.

According to statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Health’s Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), an estimated 18 people die every die while waiting for organ donations. Furthermore, because a patient’s health typically declines when there is a delay in receiving a needed organ, even those that do receive organ donations typically face worse outcomes due to the delay in their transplants.

The United States relies on volunteers to sign up and become organ donors. And while 90% of Americans support organ donation, only 30% have taken the required steps to become a donor. In an effort to increase the rate of organ donations, other countries, like Austria and Spain, have tried an opt-out approach where people are automatically considered donors unless they opt out of the process. However, doctors have faced resistance from family members opposed to donating their deceased relative’s organs, so the opt-out approach hasn’t led to a drastic increase in overall organ donations.

A recent blog published by The New York Times highlights a completely different approach taken by the Israeli government that took a multi-dimensional approach to increasing organ donations. The government launched a public awareness campaign that addressed some of the primary barriers to organ donation. In addition, the government initiated a new law that would give priority to patients who were organ donors themselves. Before Israel’s campaign, about 3,000 to 5,000 organ donation cards were turned in each month; however, during the ten week period of the campaign over 70,000 Israelis registered as organ donors leading to a 60% increase in available organs.

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Doctors are relying more and more on narcotic medications to treat patients’ increased complaints of chronic pain. However, while this might mean that more patients’ pain is being treated in the short-term, it has some potentially harmful long-term consequences. The longer patients remain on opiate medications, the less effective they are at treating pain, which sometimes results in the dosage increasing to potentially dangerous levels.

A recent medical malpractice lawsuit, Estate of Mary Shannon v. Dr. Timothy Sanders, et al. involved claims that the defendant physician’s negligence in prescribing a pain patch caused a patient’s death. The Grundy County lawsuit alleged that Dr. Timothy Sanders, an anesthesiologist, contributed to the decedent’s death by extending the use of her Fentanyl patch. The anesthesiologist had used the Fentanyl patch to treat the patient’s pain following a short, one-hour surgery to treat her broken hip. However, within nine hours of the surgery the patient died.

While the patient’s death was ultimately attributed to her Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), an autopsy report revealed that Fentanyl intoxication significantly contributed to her death. The 71 year-old decedent had been on a Fentanyl Duragic Patch for several years prior to her death as a means of treating chronic pain caused by compression fractures in her back. Fentanyl is an opiate drug and is often not prescribed for patients with COPD because of its potential to cause respiratory problems.

The decedent’s family brought a lawsuit against the defendant anesthesiologist in which it was alleged that he should not have continued the order of the Fentanyl patch for as long as he did. Instead, the family contended it should have been removed following the surgery, arguing that its continued use was contraindicated. Furthermore, the decedent’s family was critical of the anesthesiologist prescribing the Fentanyl patch in conjunction with her warming blanket on the basis that the patch should not have been exposed to a heat source.

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As surgical techniques become more advanced, more Americans are undergoing minor surgical procedures. And while many times these surgical procedures result in seemingly miraculous results, with the prior symptoms disappearing completely, some may also result in unanticipated side effects. A recent Cook County lawsuit serves as an example of some of the negative potential outcomes that can result from surgical negligence.
The Cook County lawsuit was filed against Gottlieb Memorial Hospital following a 2007 vaginal prolapse reconstruction surgery performed at its hospital. The surgeon, Dr. Robert Lai of Midwest Urology Associates, Ltd., was also named in the medical malpractice lawsuit. The lawsuit alleged that the negligent post-operative care the plaintiff received resulted in permanent nerve damage.

The 50-some year-old plaintiff had presented to Dr. Lai for a reconstruction surgery that was meant to correct her incontinence, constipation, and vaginal prolapse. The surgery was performed and seemed to have been a success. However, as the plaintiff prepared for her discharge from the hospital the day after the surgery, she began to experience weakness, pain, and tingling in her leg and buttock.

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A Lake County jury entered a verdict in favor of a woman who was sustained a head injury after falling from a surgical table. While the original medical malpractice lawsuit was filed against both the hospital where the fall occurred and the anesthesiologist who administered an epidural prior to the fall, the $790,860 verdict was only entered against the defendant hospital.

The 59 year-old plaintiff presented to Victory Memorial Hospital, now known as Vista Medical Center East, for treatment of a lower back injury. The plaintiff had injured herself after falling in a parking lot, sustaining not only the back injury, but a mild concussion as well. To help improve her pain, the plaintiff was given an epidural by Dr. Eliza Diaconescu, a pain management specialist.

According to testimony provided at the Lake County medical malpractice trial, the plaintiff remained semi-conscious after Dr. Diaconescu gave her an epidural. Dr. Diaconescu then walked away from the surgical table in order to dictate her treatment into the operative notes. An operating room nurse stayed with the plaintiff while she awaited her transfer to the recovery room. It was at this time that the plaintiff fell off the operating table, cutting her head and sustaining yet another concussion. The plaintiff filed a lawsuit against Dr. Diaconescu and Victory Memorial Hospital for their negligence in causing her injury.

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In a Cook County medical malpractice lawsuit, the Illinois Appellate Court recently ruled that a hospital could not be held liable for the potential negligence of one of its independent contractors in Lamb-Rosenfeldt v. Burke Medical Group, 2012 IL App (1st), 101558. The case was brought by the decedent’s daughter, who contended that the defendant doctor contributed to the her mother’s death by failing to timely diagnose her lung cancer.

Lee Lamb began seeing Dr. Kathryn Burke in November 2004. However, Lamb had met Dr. Burke on several previous occasions when Dr. Burke visited the hair salon where Lamb worked. And while Lamb did have her own physician at the time, she would still ask Dr. Burke questions about her medical treatment. It was during the course of those conversations that Dr. Burke became aware of Lamb’s medical history, including her diagnosis of lung cancer in 1996. So when Lamb became dissatisfied with her current primary care physician in 2004, Dr. Burke was the natural choice for a replacement.

When Dr. Burke began treating Lamb in 2004, Lamb was not actively being treated for her lung cancer. However, according to the medical malpractice complaint, Dr. Burke ignored all the warning signs that Lamb’s cancer was recurring: weight loss, frequent coughing, swallowing difficulty, fatigue, and aspiration of food. Lamb was ultimately diagnosed with a recurrence of her lung cancer in February 2006; she died just eight months later in October 2006. The complaint alleged that if Dr. Burke had recognized the signs and symptoms of her lung cancer at an earlier date that Lamb could have survived.

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For many medical diseases, early detection can drastically improve a patient’s outcome. Therefore, doctors are always working to find new ways to predict who might be at risk for certain diseases, or to prevent people from developing certain diseases. A new study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition examines what sort of things help reduce the development of colon polyps in men and women.

The study was done at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, located in Nashville, Tennessee. It involved over 5,000 men and women, looking for common trends among those who did not develop colon polyps. While the study did not reveal any link between various behaviors and colon polyps in men, there was a potential risk reducing factor for women.

The study found that women who ate three or more servings of fish per week were 33 percent less likely to develop adenomatous polyps. This finding could be particularly relevant in terms of preventive cancer treatments because adenomatous polyps are likely to become cancerous. Scientists attributed the useful benefits of fish to their high levels of omega-3 fatty acids; animal testing has shown links between omega-3 and anti-cancer effects.

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As part of an effort to reform Illinois nursing homes, government agencies are attempting to increase their oversight of potential nursing home violations. When the Department of Public Health went to investigate potential nursing home policy violation at an Illinois facility, the Illinois nursing home facility accused the health agency of failing to follow the proper investigation procedures in UDI #10, LLC v. Department of Public Health, No. 1-10-3476 (February 1, 2012).

The nursing home investigation arose after a nursing home patient, herein called R1 to protect his/her identity, died as a result of a choking incident at Pekin Manor. This was the second time R1 had experienced a choking incident in the course of one day. When R1 became unresponsive his wife called a staff member for help. The staff member called the paramedics, but did not perform CPR while waiting for their arrival. R1 was transported to the hospital by the paramedics and ended up dying later that day.

The nursing home facility was operated by UDI #10, LLC (UDI) and had specific policies and procedures in place regarding a similar situation. The policy dictated that a UDI staff member was to stay with R1 and that a staff member was to accompany the paramedics to R1’s room. In addition, the staff member should have performed CPR while awaiting the paramedics’ arrival; the only reason CPR should not have been done was if R1 had a valid do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order in his chart. And while R1 and his wife had signed a DNR order, it was invalid because it was not signed by a doctor.

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