Tips for understanding medical tests/conditions

This may be obvious for some of you folks… you know, along the lines of “check Google or Wikipedia.” But even for someone young and technologically savvy (not to mention handsome ) as myself, I’m still kind of surprised about this:
Curious what a medical condition or test looks like? Check Youtube.
Yesterday I was trying [...]

A hand-y website (sorry for the pun)

Just a quick post here… I want to point out a great website to use as a quick reference when dealing with hand/elbow injuries: Hand University. It’s a clever marketing tool from an orthopaedic office in Colorado Springs.
 It’s a neat little resource next time you need to remind yourself something like “what’s radial tunnel syndrome,” [...]

Ah, malpractice in Illinois… again

Remember yesterday’s post about new insurance companies coming to Illinois?
 Now there’s this article saying that doctors are leaving Southern Illinois because of the changes to the wrongful death act (which allow the jury to consider emotional distress).
Now let’s look at this, shall we? Here are some quotes from the article:
“We had reform to try to [...]

New Malpractice Insurer in Illinois

The Trib has this article about a new Medical Malpractice Insurance company coming to Illinois – it’s notable because the company cites “tort reform” for its willingness to come to the Land of Lincoln.
Specifically, the article cites a recent change in law that limits damages for pain and suffering to $500,000 against doctors and $1,000,000 [...]

How to get the chiropractor bills paid

Personal Injury attorneys in the Quad Cities, throughout Illinois, and probably most of the nation struggle with this conundrum quite often: Client gets into an accident. Client goes to the chiropractor. Insurance companies/juries don’t pay for the chiropractic bills.
 Believe it or not, this is a large issue here in the QC… even though part of [...]

Get your client’s past claim history!

Insurance companies have a leg up on us. They have access to databases that will tell them about every insurance claim your client has ever filed.
I’ve asked clients about past claims, past accidents and past complaints of similar injuries. Many can remember things well, but very, very often a client will claim that they never [...]

Signing away your right to sue for malpractice?

Apparently some doctors in New Jersey have started requiring patients to sign malpractice waivers that would cap potential damages, require arbitration of all cases, and otherwise limit the patient’s legal options in the event of malpractice.
I don’t see these holding up in court, but I’m not really sure. What I am sure about is that [...]

Colossus – as giant and evil as it sounds

Most injury lawyers need to know and understand Colossus. The settlement value of their cases depends on it.
 
What is Colossus? Colossus is a computer program many major insurance companies use to evaluate injury and accident claims. For the uninitiated, most accident attorneys will eventually write a demand letter to a negligent party’s insurance company [...]

There is NO malpractice crisis

Talking heads all over the country have been complaining in recent years about a “malpractice crisis,” and how areas are having problems finding doctors because of high malpractice insurance costs. They blame this on the trial lawyers, who file suits on behalf of people who were seriously injured by a physician’s negligence. People call these lawsuits “frivilous,” these [...]

Apparently Doctors don’t always wash their hands

Wow. That’s all I can say after reading this article from the Freakonomics blog. Apparently, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (admittedly a great hospital), only 65% of doctors washed their hands on a regular basis. More doctors washed their hands after the hospital installed a screen saver showing the bacteria growing on one hand.
This is scary, [...]