The patient’s family members contacted an attorney to review the case. It is easy to understand how this would be an attractive case for a plaintiff’s attorney. The patient was relatively young and died as a direct result of a physician’s error.
The defendants in the case included the outpatient surgical center, the business that owned and ran many surgical centers like this all over the country, the anesthesiologist, the anesthesiologist’s group, the orthopedic surgeon and his group, and the neurosurgeon and his professional corporation.
The lawsuit made several allegations. Several of the specific allegations that will be interesting to Med Mal Reviewer readers have been included below.
The plaintiffs claimed that the patient requested the surgery be done at a hospital, as opposed to an outpatient surgical center. They claim that the orthopedic spine surgeon advised him that it had to be done at the outpatient surgical center instead.
The plaintiffs reviewed the guidelines that the outpatient surgical center itself had set up, and noted that the patient’ surgery was not on a list of approved procedures. Furthermore, the surgeons were part owners of the surgery center, and it was suggested that this financial interest clouded their judgment.
The patient did not have a choice of anesthesiologist, and only met her the day of surgery. It was not clear to him that the anesthesiologist was technically employed by a separate group, which had a contract to provide anesthesia services at the outpatient surgical facility.
The outpatient surgery center allegedly did not provide the support to the anesthesiologist that would have typically been expected. The plaintiffs felt that she did not have the appropriate support, which contributed to the fatal error.
Multiple other allegations were also made in the initial complaint. The plaintiffs were required to submit expert witness opinions supporting their lawsuit in order to proceed. The expert witness opinions are shown on the following pages.