Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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The State of Illinois has been investigating Alden Village North and assessing whether the quality of care provided at the Illinois nursing home meets state standards. If not, the state plans on closing the Chicago nursing home because of overwhelming reports of nursing home abuse and neglect. New reports of five additional deaths caused by poor health care at the facility does not bode well for its future.

In addition to the state’s investigation, a federally-backed watchdog group, Equip for Equality, found that illnesses at Alden Village North were not properly treated, doctors ignored pages, lab results were discarded and investigations into the deaths of its residents were found to be superficial at best. The Chicago-based Equip for Equality group started its own investigation as part of a nationwide advocacy group that has been granted broad powers by Congress to help protect people with disabilities.

As part of its investigation, Equip reviewed patient records at Alden Village North in order to assess the quality of nursing home care being provided. Its investigation is now completed and Equip filed its official report with the State of Illinois this past month. Presumably the state will consider Equip’s report as it makes its decision about the future of the Chicago nursing home.

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A recent Illinois Supreme Court decision changed the way damages can be sought under the Illinois Nursing Home Care Act. The Court ruled unanimously in a 6-0 ruling that punitive damages cannot be awarded for wrongful death cases under the Nursing Home Care Act in Thomas Vincent v. Alden-Park Strathmoor, Inc., No. 110406.

Punitive damages are different than compensatory damages, which are awarded by courts and juries as payment for actual harm or losses suffered as a result of the defendant’s actions. While compensatory damages are seen almost as a way to reimburse the plaintiff for their loss, punitive damages are meant as a way to punish a defendant for its actions. Punitive damages are typically awarded in addition to compensatory damages and are only awarded when the defendant’s actions are so grossly negligent that additional censure is needed.

In the underlying Chicago nursing home malpractice case, Thomas Vincent, the legal representative for his deceased mother’s estate, filed a complaint that contained three counts requesting damages be paid by Alden-Park Strathmoor, Inc. for its negligent care and treatment of his mother prior to her death. While two of the counts sought compensatory damages, the third and final count was a survival claim filed under the Nursing Home Care Act which included a request for punitive damages for the nursing home’s allegedly willful and wanton conduct.

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A Cook County medical malpractice settlement for $5 million was approved by Cook County Circuit Court Judge William B. Maddux, marking the close of the Illinois lawsuit of The Estate of Shamiran David v. Rush Northshore Medical Center, et al., No. 07 L 8444. The Chicago medical negligence lawsuit was brought by the family of a woman who suffered a brain injury in the days following her heart surgery at Rush Northshore Medical Center.

While Mrs. David’s aortic valve replacement and coronary artery bypass grafting performed at Rush Northshore Medical Center went well, it was the complications following the surgery that led to Mrs. David’s brain injury and subsequent death. The case of Mrs. David can serve as a reminder to both patients and doctors that a successful surgery alone does not guarantee a positive outcome for a patient.

Mrs. David was discharged from the hospital following her surgery and sent home. However, the 59 year-old Cook County resident began to develop complications from her cardiac surgery within a few days of her discharge. She presented to her primary care physician with complaints of difficulty breathing and chest pains.

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Wincrest Nursing Center on Chicago’s North Side has been investigated by state and federal authorities for violations committed in its nursing home. The most recent result of this ongoing investigation was a 21-page document theCenters for Medicare & Medicaid Services submitted to the nursing home facility in late February.

Included in the Medicare & Medicaid report were allegations of nursing home abuse, specifically that Wincrest failed to notify state officials of felons living within the facility, which is required under Illinois law. In addition, the report accused Wincrest of being aware that some of its residents had used illegal drugs while housed at its nursing home facility and had been involved in crimes in the area surrounding the nursing home.

Wincrest is an 80-bed home located near Chicago’s Loyola University in Roger’s Park. While Wincrest is mostly home to adults with mental illnesses, some of its residents are known to have felony records. There are seven Loyola resident halls located within a block radius of Wincrest, which house about 600 students.

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The Illinois Appellate Court has found that a medical expert in a medical malpractice case may be impeached with the use of the physician’s §2-622 (Illinois Code of Civil Procedure) report as a prior inconsistent statement. This issue before the court was one of first impression in the state and was decided upon in Iaccino v. Anderson, No. 1-07-0207.
In the Iaccino birth injury lawsuit, the plaintiff’s attorneys alleged that the defendant doctors and hospital were responsible for the brain damage that the minor plaintiff, Jonathan Iaccino, suffered as a result of oxygen deprivation during his birth. The plaintiff’s attorneys alleged that the defendants’ medical negligent occurred as a result of their failure to monitor Jonathan’s fetal heart rate and their lack of response to the hyperstimulation of the uterus during his labor and delivery.

Gary Blake, M.D. provided a Illinois Code of Civil Procedure §2-622 affidavit as one of the plaintiff’s medical experts in Iaccino. When Dr. Blake signed the §2-622 report he stated that the decelerations recorded on a fetal-monitor strip were “variable decelerations.” However, at the trial, Dr. Blake testified that these strips showed “late decelerations” or “variable decelerations with a late component.”

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The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed a trial court decision to treat a defendant doctor’s response to a plaintiff’s request to admit facts as evidentiary evidence rather than a judicial admission. The legal ruling arose out of an Illinois medical malpractice lawsuit involving complications following a surgeon’s attempt to reverse a tubal ligation surgery, Migdalia Serrano v. Carlos A. Rotman, M.D., No. 1-09-2028.
In her surgical malpractice lawsuit, the plaintiff, Migdalia Serrano, alleged that the defendant doctor, Carlos Rotman, M.D., negligently chose not to administer Factor IX, a coagulation factor, before and after her tubal ligation surgery. The plaintiff’s lawsuit alleged that the failure to administer the coagulation factor resulted in an infected hematoma. The Cook County jury trial resulted in a verdict in favor of the defendant surgeon, which the plaintiff then appealed.

At the center of the plaintiff’s appeal was that Dr. Rotman had been aware that Serrano was a hemophilia carrier, which would have made her more susceptible to developing a hematoma. Serrano alleged that Rotman chose not to administer Factor IX despite knowing about her heightened risk for infection. Moreover, the plaintiff alleged that as a result of the surgical malpractice, she suffered from additional medical complications that would not have occurred had she been given the Factor IX prior to her surgery.

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The Illinois Department of Public Health has moved towards the final steps in closing an Illinois nursing home following several deaths of its residents in recent years. According to the governor’s senior health policy adviser, Michael Gelder, the decision was in part preemptive and was simply because “we don’t want another tragedy to occur.”

The State of Illinois advised Alden Village North Nursing Home that it intends to revoke its nursing home license and close the facility located at 7464 N. Sheridan Road in Chicago. As of October 2010, the Illinois nursing home housed around 90 adults and children with severe developmental disabilities. Illinois state officials reported that since January 2008 there have been at least eight serious violations of nursing home abuse and negligence at Alden Village North.

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Most cases brought against Illinois nursing homes are for claims of nursing home abuse or negligence. However, in the case of Carol Kopriwa v. Presbyterian Homes a/k/a Lake Forest Place, 08 L-1033, the plaintiff brought an Illinois personal injury claim against the Illinois nursing home for injuries she sustained while visiting one of its residents.

In January 2007, the plaintiff, Carol Kopriwa, was visiting her seriously ill husband at the Lake Forest Place Nursing Home. This was not the first time Mrs. Kopriwa had visited her husband at the nursing home. However, what was unique about this particular visit was that as Mrs. Kopriwa began to walk away from her husband’s bed she tripped and fell on an electrical cord.

Mrs. Kopriwa had been sitting in a chair next to her husband’s bed right before the fall and had allegedly not noticed the electrical cord being used for his bedside alarm. As a result of her fall, Mrs. Kopriwa sustained a left-sided sacral fracture and left ischiopubic fracture that would require surgery.

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A recent New York Times article reported that a new study indicated that in recent years the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not rigorously studied or tested many of its approved medical devices before clearing them for sale. The study specifically assessed many medical devices which have been the subject of major recalls over the past few years, such as mechanical ventilators, hospital infusion pumps, and external heart defibrillators.

Diana Zuckerman and Paul Brown, both with The National Research Center for Women and Families, headed up the study along with cardiologist Steven Nissen, M.D. of the Cleveland Clinic. The study, published in The Archives of Internal Medicine, focused on those medical devices that have since been labeled as high risk for recalls between 2005 and 2009. It found that most, if not all, of the medical devices were cleared for public use by the FDA without being first being tested. The FDA and a trade group representing medical device manufacturers called The Archives of Internal Medicine study flawed.

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A Cook County medical malpractice lawsuit received a jury verdict of $1.1 million against the defendant hospital. The case revolved around the medical negligence of a Cook County hospital, which led to need for several additional surgeries for the 60-some year-old plaintiff.

In 2006, the plaintiff was a patient at Northwest Community Hospital, where she had recently undergone a knee replacement surgery. In her second day of recovery following her surgery, the plaintiff fell while using the bedside commode in her hospital room.

Considering that the plaintiff had just had a knee replacement surgery, she was at risk for falls and should have had a plan of care in place that would prevent such falls from occurring. Upon investigation, it seemed that the plaintiff did in fact have such a plan of care in place – her physician had written an order stating that the plaintiff needed her knee immobilizer on and required two people to assist her when using the bedside commode.

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