Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer Blog

St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson is facing lawsuits and two federal investigations related to its cardiac care division has just informed 169 more heart patients received costly and dangerous treatments that were not needed.
These additional cases bring the total to 538 patients notified by St. Joseph's that coronary stent implants they received at the hospital may have been unnecessary. Officials at the Hospital also said more questionable procedures may be uncovered while an internal review continues.
The St. Joseph's announcement is the latest debacle in an issue that has spawned a class action lawsuit, required the removal of a prominent physician and interested the U.S. Senate. It could also result in a multi-million dollar fine for the hospital per court records.
The hospital began investigating its heart catheterization procedures after several warnings last year from federal investigators and quickly focused on stents implanted by a leading cardiologist and senior physician, Dr. Mark Midei.
Stents, which are mesh tubes placed into damaged arteries to open them up are generally implanted in patients with at least a 70% blockage. But hospital officials in their review discovered stents implanted by Dr. Midei had insufficient blockage. And that the amount of blockage was overstated in the medical reports.
"Leaders of (St. Joseph) felt it was their ethical responsibility to notify these patients to allow them to determine if medical follow-up was appropriate." The hospital said in a statement. They reiterated that Midei (who is no longer at the hospital) is the only doctor under investigation.
In 2008 Midei was recruited to lead the cardiac catheterization department at St. Josephs from his former employer MidAtlantic Cardiovascular Associates of suburban Baltimore.
Last month the U.S. Senate Finance Committee requested St. Joseph to turn over all the records of its financial relationship with stent manufactures and how the $10,000 procedures were billed to federal and private insurers.
"In addition to putting the patients lives at risk unnecessary medical procedures amount to wasteful spending of precious federal health care dollars." Said the U.S. Senate in a letter to the hospital.
If you or a loved one is the victim of a medical mistake please call my office at 1 (800) 320-0080.

A six person jury found three cigarette companies responsible for the cancer death of a Florida woman. The woman had begun smoking in 1953 at the age of 15 and died in 1995.
The lawyer who was representing her three children stated , "She started smoking in an era when cigarette advertising was pervasive, on TV-- in its infancy - in print media and on radio."
The verdict follows a series of losses by the tobacco industry after a ruling by the State Supreme Court in a tobacco class action case. In the decision the high court decertified a statewide class of addicted smokers and permitted individual suits to go forward.
Jurors reached the verdict after less than a four hour deliberation.
The jury awarded the victims family $ 15 million in compensatory damages. Jurors assigned 35 % of the responsibility to the victim for her death; 15% to one cigarette company and 20% to the other one. Jurors also assessed $2.5 million in punitive damages each cigarette company.
In most of the post-Engle cases the compensatory portion of the award has been reduced by the plantiff percentage of responsibility as found by the jurors. The issue hasn't yet been resolved in this case.
The Supreme Court upheld many of the factual findings of the jury trial in the past case including finding that the cigarette companies conspired to conceal information about the addictiveness of smoking and that cigarettes are an unreasonably dangerous product. The Supreme Court further ruled that these findings would apply in all future individual trials. The cigarette companies believe this ruling denies them rights to a fair trial.
The tobacco companies Sr. Vice President and general counsel said " We believe this verdict should be reversed because the court's trial plan improperly eliminated any requirement that plantiff prove that the companies did anything wrong to recover damages."
A spokesman for the tobacco company said they were disappointed and plan to appeal.
If your family members or loved ones have been a victim of a wrongful death call my offices located in Baltimore and Rockville, Maryland at 1-800 -320-0080 or email me at jostad@verizon.net for a free consultation.