As one of the first legislative agendas the U. S. Congress will attempt to repeal the recently enacted National Health Care Reform Act. Despite all of the negative hype this legislation has generated and whether or not you are for or against the present Health Care Bill the need for a major overhaul of the health care industry to enable the average middle class individual to have access to safe and effective health care should be a priority for our legislators.
In the New York Metropolitan area access to safe and effective medical care is getting more and more tenuous. We all know how frustrating it is to sit for hours in a walk in clinic or emergency room only to be quickly processed out with no real quality care or follow up. Hospitals, Clinics and emergency rooms are overcrowded and understaffed and closing at alarming rates. This healthcare crisis has led to suboptimum medical care and misdiagnosis of serious medical conditions that otherwise should have been diagnosed sooner and treated more effectively. In some cases these overcrowded understaffed clinics completely miss serious conditions such as undiagnosed life threatening infections, cancers, etc. that result in injuries and even premature deaths of hundreds of people every year who with timely diagnosis and treatment would have avoided serious complications and even death.
At Leav & Steinberg LLP we have successfully represented hundreds of victims of medical malpractice due to failure to timely diagnose serious medical conditions, including a recent 1.4 million dollar settlement before trial for a woman who lost her eye as a result of a post cataract eye infection which went undiagnosed and treated for several weeks due to an inadequate and incompetently staffed medical clinic.
Resources:
The Wall Street Journal April 8th 2010 St Vincent’s Hospital in New York to Close By Suzann Sataline
By Philip R. Papa