According to the Tampa Tribune, the teaching hopsital Rhoda Island Hospital has been fined again for errors made on surgical patients, and as a result will be required to install cameras in all operating rooms.  It is this type of error that would be cause for a medical malpractice attorney to file a claim on the patient’s behalf.

RI Hospital’s fine this time was $150,000 for the five wrong-site surgeries that have happened since  2007  when it was fined $50,000 due to wrong-site operations during three brain surgeries.

Video cameras in the operating are unheard of and it is an extreme measure to which the RI hospital has agreed.  Each surgeon will be taped while operating at least twice a year.

As part of the agreement with the state health department, the  hospital will be required to have a non-surgical team, clinical employee  observe the protocols that are followed before each surgery including: watching the surgeon mark the body parts to be operated on and see that the surgical team takes a time out before each surgery to discuss the procedures to be performed and confirms the area of the body that will be operated upon.  The observation clinical employee must be in place for at least a year.

Hospital errors happen all too often and patients should do whatever they can to make certain that a wrong-site surgery doesn’t happen to them.  There is nothing to prevent you from marking your left hand “not this one” if the surgery is to be on your right hand, or having a family member mark on your chest that you are to have your gall bladder removed and then confirm with everyone along they way that they know who you are what procedure you are there for.

A surgeon in Minnesota left a cancerous kidney in a patient and instead removed a healthy one. The doctor has promised to stop practicing medicine after his horrible mistake was revealed a day later by pathology reports. Surgeons will now have to double check CAT scans and MRI’s before beginning surgery. There is no word on how the patient is doing, or whether he will need a kidney transplant to survive. Most people can live with only one kidney, and now that his healthy one is gone, he might need such a transplant. Therefore, the doctor’s mistake has affected not just one person, but perhaps two since that kidney could have gone to someone else. It is also interesting to consider the recourses this patient would be left with in Florida, where one size fits all medical malpractice claims would limit his recovery for his suffering due to this shocking mistake.