You can find a good summary of Maryland medical malpractice law here.
Recently in Malpractice Laws Category
From Friday's Maryland Court of Appeals opinion, Quitty v. Spangler, in which the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed the jury's $13 million award in a tragic case of
a boy who was born with severe cerebral palsy, a good summary of the difference between informed consent and medical malpractice in Maryland:
"In a count alleging medical malpractice, a patient asserts that a healthcare provider breached duty to exercise ordinary medical care and skill based upon the standard of care in the profession, see, e.g., Dehn v. Edgecombe, 384 Md. 606, 618, 865 A.2d 603, 610 (2005) Medical malpractice is predicated upon the failure to exercise requisite medical skill and, being tortious in nature, general rules of negligence usually apply in determining liability.") (internal quotations and citations omitted), while in a breach of informed consent count, a patient complains that a healthcare provider breached a duty to obtain effective consent to treatment or procedure by failing to divulge information that would be material to his/her decision about whether to submit to, or to continue with, that treatment or procedure."
In Lockshin v. Semsker, The Maryland Court of Appeals granted cert last week, bypassing the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. The big issue? Whether the Montgomery County trial court erred in holding that the cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases does not apply in cases where health claims arbitration was waived.
Colorado now requires doctors to self report medical malpractice claims that have resulted in settlement or plaintiffs' verdict under the Michael Skolnik Medical Transparency Act in 2007. The Act is named for a patient who Skolnik died in June of 2004 after he had surgery done by a doctor who'd been
the subject of a malpractice claim in another state.
Sounds like good new for patients looking to determine whether there are medical malpractice claims against their doctor. But it is up to the doctor to self-report malpractice claims and the Colorado will no auditing their
entries. The risk for Colorado doctors: $5,000 for failure to report each malpractice claim. So doctors who choose to hide something, believing it could be bad for business so they are willing to risk the $5,000,
will have to be caught by a patient, rather than someone from the state of Colorado.
This is progress but we need more progress. This new Colorado law is the right start, it just needs sharper teeth.
