Healthcare Litigation Research Articles

Nutritional nonadherence and wound healing.

Nancy Collins, PhD, RD, LD/N, is a registered and licensed dietitian in private practice in Pembroke Pines, FL. For the past decade, she has served as a consultant to health care institutions on issues regarding regulatory compliance, clinical nutrition, and food-service management and as a medical-legal expert to law firms involved in health care litigation. Questions for future columns may be sent to Dr Collins at [email protected].

Vegetarian diets and wound healing.

Nancy Collins, PhD, RD, LD/N, is a registered and licensed dietitian in private practice in Pembroke Pines, FL. For the past decade, she has served as a consultant to health care institutions on issues regarding regulatory compliance, clinical nutrition, and food service management and as a medical-legal expert to law firms involved in health care litigation. Questions for future columns may be sent to Dr Collins at [email protected]

Obesity and wound healing.

Nancy Collins, PhD, RD, LD/N, is a registered and licensed dietitian in private practice in Pembroke Pines, FL. For the past decade, she has served as a consultant to health care institutions on issues regarding regulatory compliance, clinical nutrition, and food service management and as a medical-legal expert to law firms involved in health care litigation. Questions for future columns may be sent to Dr Collins at [email protected]

Punitive damages: court orders two-thirds to go to state university cancer research program.

On December 20, 2002, the Ohio Supreme Court issued an opinion in Dardinger v. Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield granting a landmark punitive damages award against the defendant-insurer for breach of contract and bad faith in its coverage of a cancer patient. The court directed that the punitive damages award of $30 million, should it be accepted by the plaintiff, be apportioned between the plaintiff and a cancer research fund to be established in the name of the plaintiff's deceased wife, Esther Dardinger. In so doing, the court broke new ground in the scope and social purpose of punitive damages in health care litigation, as well as the courts’ role in distributing those damages.After being diagnosed with metastatic brain tumors in October 1996, Esther began intra-arterial chemotherapy (IAC) treatments at the recommendation of her physician, Dr. Newton. IAC is a targeted form of chemotherapy in which an arterial catheter is threaded through a cranial artery near the tumor and into the brain.

Clinical negligence and the need to keep professionally updated.

Nurses and doctors are under a legal duty to keep reasonably up to date; this is a fundamental aspect of their legal duty of care to their patients. A nurse or doctor could be negligent if a patient is harmed because of ignorance of well accepted and known published nursing and medical research findings. It is all a question of fact and degree and cases will turn on their own circumstances. There are a number of reported court cases which explore this issue and which contain useful guidance. These cases are discussed within the context of the new NHS and the Government's emphasis on health quality, and increasing healthcare litigation.

Protein and wound healing.

Nancy Collins, PhD, RD, LD/N, is a registered and licensed dietitian in private practice in Pembroke Pines, FL. For the past decade, she has served as a consultant to health care institutions on issues regarding regulatory compliance, clinical nutrition, and food service management and as a medical-legal expert to law firms involved in health care litigation. Questions for future columns may be E-mailed to Dr Collins at [email protected].

The difference between albumin and prealbumin.

Nancy Collins, PhD, RD, LD/N, is a registered and licensed dietitian in private practice in Pembroke Pines, FL. For the past decade she has served as a consultant to health care institutions on issues regarding regulatory compliance, clinical nutrition, and food service management and as a medical-legal expert to law firms involved in health care litigation. Questions for future columns may be E-mailed to Dr Collins at [email protected].

Anabolic Agents and Wound Healing

Nancy Collins, PhD, RD, LD/N, is a registered and licensed dietitian in private practice in Pembroke Pines, FL. For the past decade she has served as a consultant to health care institutions on issues regarding regulatory compliance, clinical nutrition, and food service management and as a medical/legal expert to law firms involved in health care litigation. Dr Collins is a member of the speaker's bureau for BTG Pharmaceuticals. Questions for future columns may be sent to Dr Collins at [email protected].

Evidence-based medicine and the law: the courts confront clinical practice guidelines.

This article examines how courts are likely to apply evidence-based medicine, and particularly clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), in healthcare litigation involving quality-of-care and entitlement-to-benefits (coverage) claims. Exploring the "politics" of the current situation, it observes that, just as clinicians have been reluctant to use CPGs in practice, courts have been, and likely will continue to be, slow to apply them in deciding cases., The article analyzes extant and proposed statutory approaches to legitimizing and promoting courts' use of CPGs. It concludes by renewing the author's earlier and controversial proposal to establish a voluntary federal program for certifying guidelines and directing courts to give certified CPGs greater weight in healthcare litigation.

Healthcare litigation protocols under review.

Times are changing in the arena of healthcare litigation. An important document is currently being circulated among key professionals. Pre-Action Protocol for the Resolution of Clinical Disputes (Clinical Disputes Forum (CDF), 1998) will alter the ways in which clinical negligence claims against doctors, nurses and other health carers are handled. The CDF is a multidisciplinary body formed in 1997 as a result of Lord Woolf's ‘Access to justice’ inquiry.

Healthcare litigation: working towards a culture change.

This article discusses two recently published documents: the Department of Health's (DoH's) Executive Letter EL (96) 11 (DoH, 1996); and the Woolf Report (Woolf, 1996). These documents will have an important impact on healthcare litigation and will strongly influence the way in which clinical negligence claims are conducted and managed. The documents will influence clinical risk management strategies and the avoidance of clinical negligence.

Assisting Judges in Screening Medical Practice Guidelines for Health Care Litigation

In a far-reaching decision about scientific evidence in federal cases handed down at the very end of the 1992-1993 term, the U.S. Supreme Court implicated medical practice guidelines in indirect, profound, yet highly uncertain ways. In Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc the Court ruled that judges must actively screen novel scientific evidence to assure both its relevance and its reliability.