In the August 26th Sarasota Herald Tribune, local section, the headline article is titled “HOSPITAL ERROR PROMPTS REVIEW”. In summary, the article states that government regulators have accused the staff at Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s emergency department, including the attending physician and an attending nurse, of neglecting a pregnant woman after she arrived bleeding and in labor with twins at the emergency department on July 1st, 2011. The twins were lost while she was at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. The article does not address the issue of whether proper care could have saved them.
Assuming for discussion’s sake that proper care could have saved the twins, what damages could the family have recovered? I recently wrote a blog article which addressed the limitations of liability enjoyed by emergency department physicians and nurses. To recap, to collect against a health care provider that treats you in an emergency department setting, Florida law requires that you prove that the treating health care provider acted with “reckless disregard”, a very difficult and high standard. This standard applies not only to the treating physicians and nurses, but also to a claim against the hospital itself. Further, even if you can prove that very high standard for recovery, all of your damages are capped at $100,000. Finally, if a claim were to be brought against Sarasota Memorial Hospital or its employees, they would also have “sovereign” or government immunity which adds yet another separate and distinct cap on damages and requires additional steps which must be taken prior to bringing any claim. That’s right, Sarasota Memorial Hospital is a state government entity. In other words, that mother’s recoverable damages, assuming her children could have been saved and were not, are extremely limited.
This is not an indictment of the physician or the staff of Sarasota Memorial Hospital that provided the care and treatment to this pregnant woman. I was not present, I do not have privy to the medical records, and I have no way of knowing all of the facts and circumstances which led to her loss of her twins.
However, this is an indictment of our medical malpractice legal system. Time and again, for at least the past two decades, I have heard about the medical malpractice crisis in the state of Florida. The verdict is in – there is a crisis, as victims of medical malpractice are routinely deprived of viable claims by our Florida legislature.