In early May, the Coplan + Crane team of Ben Crane and Ted Jennings settled a case against a Chicago-area hospital in mediation for $5.5 million. Hospital errors are devastating for families and leave them with many unanswered questions. This case brings justice to a woman who lost her only daughter as a result of hospital negligence.
The case was filed because a blood test performed on a young patient awaiting a kidney transplant and starting dialysis to treat kidney disease revealed that the patient had virtually no circulating white blood cells, which put her at high risk for infection and rapid decompensation. Despite this ominous finding, the doctor on call did nothing to address this medical emergency. The standard of care required urgent referral to an emergency room. Instead, two and a half days later, the patient collapsed, and when she was rushed to the emergency room, she had advanced sepsis from an E. coli infection and was suffering from lactic acidosis, and shock liver. Tragically, she died within hours of her arrival in the ED. Had she been treated when the original lab report was available to her doctors, she would have survived with few, if any, complications.
Hospitals have a duty to care for patients and act on critical lab results to ensure they experience a smooth, quick recovery. In this case, the hospital failed to meet the minimum standard of care in treating their patient, and that negligence had deadly consequences
While tragic, the goal of this litigation was to bring a sense of peace to the patient’s family. Ben Crane remarked, “we are extremely pleased with this early settlement, as it allows our client to obtain compensation, closure, and justice swiftly and without having to go through the arduous trial process.” To learn more about Coplan + Crane’s medical malpractice and hospital error work, visit the website.
