KOMO TV reports that the boy’s name is Noah B. Bishop.  The King County Medical Examiner has stated the cause of death was cerebral and cerebellar laceration and contusion, subarachnoid hemorrhage – bleeding between brain and surrounding tissues, brain stem hemorrhage and multiple skull fractures. The death was ruled accidental.

The boy’s injuries are severe.  The news reports do not state how the boy received such serious injuries while in the care of a reputable medical clinic.  The spokesperson for the University of Washington has declined to explain how the injuries occurred, but did state that an investigation has begun.  This suggests that the hospital knows it may have committed negligence which was a cause of the boy’s injury.

Usually when this type of tragic accident occurs, and no explanation is given by the hospital about how the injuries inflicted, a claim for negligence will often exist.  The term ‘negligence’ is defined as the failure to exercise ordinary care in similar circumstances.  Based on similar cases that I’ve handled involving children, it appears that the boy may have been dropped onto the floor and landed on his head and suffered a traumatic brain injury or TBI. A young child of this age does not have to be dropped from a high distance to cause the type of injuries that were found to have caused this boy’s death.

There are important differences associated with representing child injury claims.  These differences are explored in depth in my book Little Kids, Big Accidents.  I offer the book for free to parents of injured children.

If it is determined that the University of Washington’s negligence caused the boy’s injuries, then the parents will also have a wrongful death claim against the hospital for the loss of their boy.  There are special statutes that apply to parents who have lost a child due to another party’s negligence.  Wrongful death claims are complicated, especially when it deals with the death of children.  You can learn more about wrongful death cases by visiting the Davis Law Group website and DLG’s wrongful death page.

I want to offer my sincere and heartfelt sympathies to the parents of this young boy.  This type of tragic loss can devastate even the strongest of families.  I also have a young boy of similar age, so I cannot imagine the level of pain and grief these parents must be experiencing.  I hope they can get the answers of what happened and why, and at least start to heal from this painful experience.

There is a non-profit organization called the Institute for Safe Medication Practices.  ISMP is actually certified by the federal government to collect error reports and other information about quality breaches. ISMP together with the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists are launching a new National Alert Network for Serious Medication Errors. The network will be used to send email alerts to 35,000 pharmacists working in hospitals and health systems, as well as physicians and nurses, when a dangerous or life-threatening error is reported to ISMP.

WSJ reports that there is growing pressure on doctors and hospitals to cut costs, especially in a down economy.  This pressure and cost-cutting may actually result in more medication errors.  Sloppy record keeping, poor organization, and the shortage of staff all combine to increase the chance that a mistake will be made in prescribing a certain medication, or giving the wrong dose, or both.

Consumers can also sign up for customized alerts about the medications they take and report problems they encounter with medications at ISMP’s consumermedsafety.org Web site, and submit reports of errors directly at the FDA at fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch.

The article states that 98,000 people die every year from medical mistakes.  This is more than the number of people killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.  Also, more than 99,000 patients succumb to hospital-acquired infections, and most of these deaths are clearly preventable.

Hearst reports that there is a prevalent “veil of secrecy” among hospitals when it comes to reporting the mistakes and the circumstances surrounding the preventable deaths of patients.   It appears that among states that are participating in healthcare safety campaigns, just 20% of the hospitals in these areas are participating.  You would think that the medical mistake-death statistics would provide some incentive for most if not all of these hospitals to participate in a campaign designed to reduce mistakes and prevent unnecessary mistaks.

The case of Michael Blankenship

A 15-year old boy sought dental treatment at the dental clinic of a well-known and highly respected hospital that specializes in treating children.  Michael Blankenship had autism, but he received regular treatment at this hospital.

When Michael was discharged the hospital’s chief pediatric dentist made a fatal mistake.  She prescribed a Fentanyl “pain patch” because Michael’s mother informed the hospital that her son could not, or would not, ingest oral medication due to his autism.  This fact had also been recorded in Michael’s chart years earlier.

The dentist prescribed Fentanyl, a very potent narcotic that is designed to treat chronic pain patients.  According to the drug’s warning label, Fentanyl should never be prescribed to an opiate-naive patient like a young 15-year-old boy who had no history of using narcotic medication over a long period of time.  And the drug should never be used to treat acute pain, or pain following surgery on an as needed basis. 

But Michael’s dentist prescribed the highest dose available, and instructed mom to apply the patch later that evening.  Even the hospital’s head pharmacist failed to detect the mistake, and also told mom again that the prescription was accurate and the dose safe.

Michael’s mother did as instructed.  The next morning Michael was found dead in his room.  The Fentanyl patch delivered so much of the narcotic to Michael’s system that it caused respiratory arrest and this caused his death.  As you can imagine, Michael’s mother is devastated. 

The whole family is now suffering over what was a very preventable mistake.  It never should have happened had there been appropriate safeguards in place by the hospital. 

A dentist decided to prescribe a lethal dose of a narcotic that never should have been prescribed in the first place.  The dentist merely had to consult the Physician Desk Reference (a reference book that most physicians have in their office) to discover that there were at least 5 warning signs in Michael’s case which would have informed any reasonably competent doctor that the drug should not be used at all.

What can we do as a society to prevent medical mistakes?  The first order of business is to communicate how prevalent mistakes are in our hospitals today.  Yet the doctors and the state medical association consistently spout propaganda to deflect attention of these mind-numbing statistics by arguing that doctors should be immune from mistakes so lawyers can’t sue and obtain million dollar jury verdicts.

I’ve never seen a multi-million dollar verdict against a doctor or hospital that didn’t involve a horrible injury or the needless death of a patient.  When negligent physicians and hospitals maim and kill, they cause a substantial amount of suffering, pain, and usually an extensive neeed for future medical care.

Just a few years ago the Washington State Medical Association waged an aggressive campaign to limit damages recoverable in medical negligence cases.  The doctors argued that physicians were having to leave the state in record numbers because of outrageous insurance premiums.  The measure was soundly defeated by Washington citizens.  But word is that the WSMA is planning its next attack in the coming years.

The article by Hearst has again raised awareness of a problem that no one, not the local and national governments combined, has addressed through public attention and intelligent disclosure laws.  If hospitals were forced to report all incidences of negligence, then I believe more would be done to avoid the mistakes in the first place.  But the healthcare industry has continued to fight against reasonable reporting and disclosure laws.