Oklahoma’s Dental Act was intended to ensure patient safety, but limited funding for regulators, a small staff and a state prohibition against surprise inspections restrict its effectiveness when there’s trouble. The state Dentistry Board claims a Tulsa-area oral surgeon ran …
A Nevada jury says the state’s largest health management organization is liable for $24 million in compensatory damages to three plaintiffs in a negligence lawsuit stemming from a hepatitis C outbreak that became public in 2008. A plaintiffs’ lawyer asked …
Citing the scope of a public health scare involving thousands of patients of an Oklahoma oral surgeon, the head of the state’s dentistry board said she wants prosecutors to consider pursuing criminal charges. Nearly 1,000 of Dr. W. Scott Harrington’s …
Looking to find out whether they were exposed to hepatitis or the virus that causes AIDS, hundreds of patients of an Oklahoma-based oral surgeon accused of unsanitary practices showed up at a health clinic. The patients turned up March 30, …
A Spokane jury awarded $813,000 this week to a woman whose foot was amputated following the wrong diagnosis by her physician. It was the second time a jury heard Darlene Turner’s medical malpractice suit against now-retired Dr. Nathan Stime. The …
A 28-year-old Manoa woman has filed a lawsuit against a Honolulu naturopathic doctor she says acted negligently and caused her son to suffer permanent brain injury. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Margaret Drake filed the negligence lawsuit Monday against naturopathic doctor …
UC Irvine has agreed to pay $1.2 million to settle allegations that the Southern California university allowed residents at its medical center to give patients anesthesia without supervision, then billed Medicare as if doctors were present. The Orange County Register …
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber has signed a bill creating a new mediation process for patients injured by medical mistakes. Kitzhaber signed the measure Monday flanked by legislators and the leaders of the Oregon Medical Association and the Oregon Trial Lawyers …
A teenage boy and his mother have sued a Portland hospital, alleging the boy was burned after a technician left metal discs on his body during a magnetic resonance imaging exam. The Oregonian reported that Aaron Lee and his mother, …
A new Arizona Supreme Court ruling upholds a state law that seeks to screen out flimsy medical-malpractice suits by requiring that plaintiffs have a testifying witness from the same medical specialty as the doctor being sued. The court’s unanimous ruling …
