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A study prepared by the Chicago Reporter shows that black Chicago area nursing home residents receive the worst quality care in the country. There is just one nursing home in the Chicago area rated excellent by the federal government where the majority of the patients are black. These homes have more federal violations, medical malpractice and personal injury claims against them then majority white nursing homes.

The Reporter analyzed records from over 15,000 nursing homes nationwide in order to determine whether disparities exist in the quality of care based on a variety of factors, including race. The Reporter found that the worst rating was given to 57% of Chicago area nursing homes where the patient population was majority black.

Nursing homes have to comply with a variety of state and federal regulations that govern the quality of care required of their patients. There is a particular need to regulate nursing homes as they are usually operated as a for profit business and the patients are typically infirm and/or elderly. In 1987 the federal government passed The Omnibus Budget Reconcilliation Act which outlined the rights of nursing home patients, including the right to be properly evaluated at the time of admission and regularly thereafter as well as the right to have a doctor care for them.

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In the July issue of The Journal Of Obstetrics And Gynecology the American College of Obstetrics & Gynecology (“ACOG”) is rolling out its revised practice guideline for Fetal Heart Monitoring. According to the New York Times, the college hopes the new guidelines will do away with inconsistent interpretations and cause a reduction in the rate of caesarean sections, which is as high as 40% in cities like Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.

More then 85% of the more than four million babies born in the United States are subjected to continuous fetal heart monitoring. The force behind the revised ACOG guidelines, Dr. George Macones, a Washington University OB/GYN, believes that continuous fetal heart monitoring became the standard of care before studies could be done to show that the benefits of monitoring outweigh the risk of caesarian section. The college believes that fetal heart monitoring has caused a rise in caesarian section and forcep deliveries, is used by lawyers to bolster meritless malpractice claims and has not reduced the incidence of Cerebral Palsy and/or fetal death.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PwGRDnXwow

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Darlene McCue of Bristol, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, was killed on Sunday when her bicycle was hit by a Yorkville man who was driving a pickup truck. Her daughter, age 25, was also injured in the accident and remains in fair condition at Rush-Copley Hospital. The pickup truck was driving east on Kennedy Road when it struck the two cyclists who were travelling in the same direction.

Police cited the truck driver for improper lane usage. Early investigations do not show any sign of alcohol or drug involvement. Bicycle accidents and injuries are often tragic. Following basic safety guidelines will help to prevent a bicycle tragedy.

Here are some tips to help you remain safe when riding your bicycle:

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What does reforming medical malpractice have to do with the current health care reform debate that is a hot topic in Washington and here in Illinois? Not much, at least according to one ranking United States Senator.

“I honestly really don’t see this as a health care issue,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). The Senator, a former Rhode Island attorney general, argues that medical malpractice is more of an “intruder” into the debate to protect insurance companies, hospitals and doctors from being accountable for their mistakes.

There is very little objective evidence that malpractice reforms, like capping damages awards, have any impact on health care costs. California, which has had caps on medical malpractice awards for more then thirty years, has not seen health care costs reduced over that time period. The argument that doctors are practicing defensive medicine by ordering expensive tests to protect themselves from litigation is equally unpersuasive. Susan Steinman, the American Association for Justice’s director of policy, argued that hospitals and doctors seek additional tests to make more money, not because of the fear of lawsuits. Defensive medicine is not nearly the issue that doctors make it out to be and is more of a red herring to distract from real problems with the health care system, she said.

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A Chicago man was critically injured and another chicago man was killed when they were sucked under a Metra Train on Chicago’s Southside yesterday. The accident occured yesterday in an area between the Metra tracks near the 7500 block of south exchange avenue in the city’s South Shore neighborhood.

The electric train was travelling at 8 miles per hour, according to a spokesman for Metra, when the men were sucked under the train and dragged along the tracks.

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The Chicago Tribune is reporting that Juan Johnson, a Chicago resident, was awarded $21 million dollars by a jury in a wrongful conviction lawsuit. Johnson was framed for a 1989 murder and spent eleven and a half years in prison before he was finally cleared of the crime in 2004. The award is the largest ever in Chicago for a wrongful conviction case.

The defendants in the case, The City Of Chicago and former police officer Reynaldo Guevara were alleged to have intimidated witnesses into testifying that Johnson killed a rival gang member outside a nightclub on North and Western Avenues on the northside of Chicago. The former officer allegedly told witnesses that if they didn’t blame Johnson for the murder then they themselves might be implicated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wYaOsCVRCI

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Lawyers at Goldberg & Goldberg settled a psychiatric malpractice case this week that was filed against Dr. Dixon Spivy and St. Joseph’s Hospital in Chicago. The case involved a young pregnant mother of two who was released from St. Joseph’s Hospital after a suicide attempt. She continued to suffer from major depression and killed herself and her unborn fetus shortly thereafter. The case was pending in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois.

The defendant’s alleged that the plaintiff, who took more then twenty melatonin sleeping pills, had not actually tried to kill herself and was merely trying to go to sleep. They also claimed that the plaintiff was not a risk of harm to herself or her unborn fetus. Dr. Spivy admitted that he only spet fifteen minutes evaluating the plaintiff in the hospital before declaring that she was only suffering from a mood disorder.

The case settled for an undisclosed sum of money.

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How do we cap medical malpractice without capping medical malpractice awards for those patients who are injured by the negligence of doctors. Everyone agrees that the health care system in the United States is in need of a drastic overhaul. The key is accomplishing an overhaul without further abridging the rights of the needy.

Andy Hoffman in Friday’s Daily Kos Online wrote an excellent editorial suggesting a novel, yet thusfar, unexplored solution to reducing the cost of medical malpractice claims on society. Weed out the worst offenders, those doctors who repeatedly victimize their patients and have no business practicing medicine.

Focusing on medical malpractice caps will do nothing to reduce health care costs. California, as Hoffman notes, has had caps on medical malpractice awards for the past 34 years. The caps in california are drastic, $250,000 limits on malpractice awards, and have had literally no effect on the cost of malpractice insurance or the price of health care in that state. Why not focus on the cause of medical malpractice cases and the conduct of those bad doctors who are driving up prices for everyone else, rather then the victims? Sounds reasonable to us.

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Searching for a lawyer who practices in the area of medical malpractice in Chicago, Illinois is as easy as opening up you web browser and Googling “medical malpractice chicago.” When i ran this search term Google returned 275,000 search results. The first page of results alone listed more then 30 lawyers, including those who have purchased sponsored ads. I know a lot of these lawyers, and some of them do practice in the area of medical malpractice and are very fine attorneys. The vast majority of others are “brokers”, business men who earn a living referring cases to other lawyers who are capable of actually working on a case and expecting part of the fee as a result of finding the case.

At Goldberg & Goldberg we have been practicing in the area of medical malpractice in Chicago for more then forty years. We do not broker cases out to other lawyers. We work up and try our client’s cases ourselves. Our results speak for themselves. We have collected almost $1 billion in compensation for our clients.

When you interview a lawyer that you have found on the internet about his ability to handle your case you are making an intensely important decision. Can this lawyer carry my banner and accomplish the herculean task of bringing a hospital or doctor to his knees in court. In order to do this you should ask a few basic questions of your potential lawyer to see if he has the right stuff to handle your case. If the lawyer hems and haws when answering your direct question you should consider finding someone else to represent you. Here are some sample questions you should ask:

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Trying lawsuits in Chicago at the Cook County Courthouse located at The Richard J. Daley Center is a risky proposition. Even though anti-consumer groups like the Chamber of Commerce and other insurance company proxies have identified Illinois as a judicial “hellhole” the fact of the matter is that injured people face an uphill battle whenever they go to the courthouse.

According to statistics published by the Clerk of the Circuit Court and the presiding Judge of the Law Division, Judge William Maddux, the Law Division had 14,713 new jury filings, and 17,548 pending jury cases — numbers that are fairly consistent with the last several years. And in the three-year period used for this review of Law Division jury verdicts, the number of verdicts each year ranged from 402 to 475. Among those cases juries ruled for defendants in 71 percent of the medical malpractice suits in that same three-year period. And comparing 2007 to 2008, the plaintiff win percentage in medical malpractice verdicts fell from 39 to 18 percent.

While it is true that the vast majority of lawsuits are settled by the parties prior to a jury verdict, those plaintiffs that take a matter to the jury for final resolution face a greater chance of leaving the courthouse without being compensated. At Goldberg & Goldberg our record of success in the Cook County law Division is without compare. We have settled and tried to verdict more then 135 cases that have settled for more then $1 million dollars, including the largest personal injury verdict ever in the State of Illinois, $127,700,000. Winning a case against a doctor or a hospital is an uphill battle. We work up and try our own cases in the firm unlike other lawyers who advertise their experience and results and then refer cases to actual trial lawyers like Goldberg & Goldberg.

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