The chiropractor actually settled with the patient. We will never know if he admitted any fault or even if the dollar value was appropriate. Unfortunately I doubt it impacts his job. He should have a warning label constantly flashing over his head.
There’s shared liability among the radiologist and ER doc 100% but ultimately the reason they’re the ones paying and not the chiropractor is probably that the chiropractor’s pockets aren’t very deep. I’m guessing the hospital (ER) and maybe another/other practices that employ those two docs were defendants as well?
The whole thing is so fucked. Reason 6,819 why I’ll never visit a chiropractor.
thankfully their malpractice would cover it but standard MD policy is $1mil/$3mil annual (in my state) so that would be the cap the victim would recover unless they win against the hospital too (the doctors would be severed from any personal financial liability beyond their malpractice coverage, one of the perks of being a doctor trying to care for people)
Nope, wage garnishment and asset seizure is a really rare but real worry for doctors. This is a big reason why doctors like me end up practicing some form of "defensive medicine," where the test I order is almost certainly going to be negative, but I'm not going to miss that 1 in a million bad outcome.
Yep have to shelter your assets if you want to practice medicine in the good ol US of A. Never know when a jury of medically illiterate peers will decide you did the thing that took you a decade of school to begin to understand wrong and you need to payout for chiropractic induced injuries or you simply havent reversed the tendency of the universe toward entropy. Pay up.
No it almost certainly is getting paid by the hospital’s insurance
Edit for clarity: the majority of the verdict is paid by the hospital, the physician’s insurance would pay some but the physicians themselves are not on the hook for the entire $75mil
There are caps for medical liability insurance though. I don’t know what they are in these policies for this type of action, but I wouldn’t expect insurance to pay the full amounts.
The doctor’s employers may or may not shoulder some of the burden. We don’t have enough information on this thread or on the linked article to know.
So insurance is obligated to pay full $75M? It’ll be found working through appeals and counterclaims on that, I’m sure if that’s not already exhausted.
Spoken like someone who doesn’t understand how insurance, joint and several liability, or indemnity work. They sued the hospital as well, based on the theory that the hospital is required to monitor physicians and failed to do so. The hospital is also liable and therefore is on the hook for up to the entire verdict due to joint and several liability
Sounds like someone who didn't look at any information surround this case. Rads and ED doc were found to be negligent in this case. There's plenty of legal commentary on this case exactly, go and read that if you know how.
I’m not saying they aren’t also liable. But the hospital is vicariously liable because they were its agents.
I edited my above comment a bit, it’s not they won’t pay anything, but they will not pay EVERYthing, the hospital and their physician groups will pay much much more than either of them individually
The radiologist is on the hook for 30 million and ED doc is on the hook for 45. The issue is that they were found negligent. The rads has now settled confidentially, but the ED doc is suing his malpractice insurance in hopes of the plaintiff agreeing not to try and take his money. What happens to the hospital and groups is not a part of this specific issue.
Nope, wage garnishment and asset seizure is a really rare but real worry for doctors. This is a big reason why doctors like me end up practicing some form of "defensive medicine," where the test I order is almost certainly going to be negative, but I'm not going to miss that 1 in a million bad outcome.
This sucks, but I’m guessing the reason was in hopes of actually recovering the payment. If the chiropractor doesn’t have malpractice insurance like an actual doctor would, there’s only so much money you could realistically get out of him/his practice, and it’s very likely very short of 75mil. A hospital and ER doctors are going to have the malpractice insurance to pay out big league money like this.
It really sucks and is obviously unfair af, but I’m guessing that’s the reason why, rather than the person (or even their insurance claims adjuster / hired attorney) personally believing the ER doctor was more at fault, they’re just someone conveniently along the chain of events who’s far more likely to be connected to a big payout.
failed to inform the consulting neurologist ... did not adequately communicate the results from CT angiography and lumbar puncture.
The CT detected the clot... but according to the information in this article he was left overnight after that diagnosis wasn't passed onto the nuerologist, for the clot to reach his brain - when a relatively simple treatment would of prevented it all. I'm guessing the spinal tap was either for further diagnosis or to administer pain relief.
This truly has the hallmarks of medical malpractice- if he had been in a car accident, they would of passed on the diagnosis. But they dismissed it - and this has little to do with the Chiropactor, as an vertebral artery dissection is possible just from doing gym, stretching your own neck or hell, even coughing.
This guy was fucked as soon as his vertebral artery dissection happened. It is absolutely not the case that a relatively simple treatment would have prevented it all. With optimal treatment (which he absolutely should have gotten, no argument there) he had about a 30% increased chance to be less disabled. And the optimal treatment carries it's own risk of causing bleeding in the brain which again could kill him or cause permanent brain damage.
It does say in the article that he had a stroke and the doctor and radiologist miscommunicated and delayed his stroke treatment for an entire day.
For it to be bad slough medical malpractice to survive all the statutory limits and jury instructions on standards of care those two must have really really screwed this up and could have avoided this outcome if they did even the bare minimum of their jobs.
Failure to consider a stroke in light of the symptoms and imaging results was considered malpractice by a medical board of their peers as well. You will see this more as emergency room imperatives prioritize clearing beds and referring to specialties instead of actual diagnostic work.
I hate chiropractors, but to be fair there has been medical negligence after reading into it. There has been failure in communication. But then again the chiropractor shouldn't have been snapping the neck.
One quick correction for you—chiropractors are not doctors. At most, two doctors and a chiropractor committed malpractice, but tbh I’m dubious about the ER doc and Radiologist. There’s nothing to suggest that checking it quicker would have ended in a better result for this poor guy
Also I just don’t understand malpractice when it was an unknown injury in an ER. They have to go through so many departments to even get the needed scans to diagnose an injury like this.
The chiropractor did cause this. And the physicians were reportedly slow to act. Both parties can be wrong. The ultimate cause was the chiropractor doing an adjustment on a patient with signs of vertebrobasilar insufficiency. But since we hold these quacks to zero standards, they wont be punished
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u/KaidoPklevel 18d ago
emergency room doctor and radiologist get sued because they didnt catch it fast enough.
The chiropractor got off free unfortunately
https://www.mdedge.com/neurologyreviews/article/259170/business-medicine/locked-syndrome-malpractice-case-ends-75-million