Medical Malpractice and Wrongful Deaths in Illinois

How large is the medical malpractice problem in Illinois? How many people actually die because of physician or hospital errors? The answers to those two questions are “very large” and “too many.”

Public hospitals in Illinois paid more than $180 million over the past decade for patient deaths at the taxpayer-supported institutions, a figure that points to numerous medical errors despite efforts to reduce mistakes, a recent investigation found.

Most of those payouts stemmed from deaths at Cook County hospitals and the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System on Chicago’s west side. Payments have been reviewed related to deaths at the five federal Veterans Affairs medical centers in Illinois as well as seven state-run mental health facilities and 20 locally controlled hospitals outside Chicago.

In all, payouts were made 184 patient deaths. The payments range from multimillion-dollar settlements to amounts totaling tens of thousands, according to records obtained through both federal and Illinois open-records laws.

In Illinois where government health care providers say they are making changes to reduce errors, survivors often spend years trying to collect money from public hospitals after deaths of children, wives, husbands and parents. This type of delay is painful to victims and their families, and should not be necessary.

An increasing number of surgical procedures are being performed by robots. While that may seem assuring, there are mistakes made by robots. They are guided by human doctors.

At the advice of his doctors one patient underwent a robotic-assisted procedure to remove his spleen, court documents state. Lawyers for the patient’s wife alleged that four doctors were responsible for piercing part of the man’s small intestine known as the duodenum during the surgery but didn’t recognize the perforation. Days later, after the man’s condition worsened, doctors performed another procedure and still didn’t recognize the pierced intestine, the suit alleged. Two weeks after the initial procedure, Fernandez died after suffering from infection, flesh-eating bacteria, difficulty breathing and brain damage from lack of oxygen, according to court documents.

Information is the key to making proper decisions, and fortunately today’s internet makes a plethora of data available to patients who may be entering a hospital. One such resource is the website www.hospitalinspections.org where you can find reports of complaints on every hospital in the United States. For Illinois specifically, click here.

Malpractice prevention is the goal of patients, hospitals and doctors, but it still happens. When it does, victims are usually in no condition mentally or physically to navigate the complex process of finding out what happened and protecting their rights.

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