Posts by Crandall & Pera Law, LLC

Defects in some Medtronic devices used in heart procedures are severe enough to cause serious injury or death, according to federal health officials.  About 15,000 guidewires that are inserted through an artery to guide other devices, such as stents to hold open blocked arteries, into place have been recalled since October. Medtronic received reports of…

New guidelines that provide a major change for preventing heart attacks and strokes are being debated in the medical community, according to a recent article in The Columbus Dispatch. The guidelines, drafted by heart experts for the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology, relies on a formula using factors like age and…

Fifteen nursing homes throughout Northeast Ohio are among the worst-rated facilities in the nation and show no signs of improving, according to an USA Today analysis of ratings given by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The ratings take into consideration patient abuse, cleanliness of the facility and equipment, staff licensing and quality of…

Diagnosis errors, the most common form of medical mistakes, lead to permanent damage or death for as many as 160,000 patients each year, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University.  Healthcare providers are turning to a number of innovative strategies to fix the oversights in the quest for the right diagnosis. Computers are used to…

With abuse of painkillers steadily on the rise, the Food and Drug Administration has recommended tighter controls on how doctors prescribe these drugs, according to The New York Times. A debate over whether painkillers that contain the narcotic hydrocodone should be controlled as tightly are more powerful painkillers such as OxyContin has been argued for…

A debate over whether paying living kidney donors is practical or ethical is brewing in the medical community as the number of donors continues to steadily decline.  More than 98,000 people are currently waiting for kidneys in the U.S. alone, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, with more than 4,500 fatalities while waiting…

Serious safety violations have forced the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to reprimand and shut down several commercial truckers recently, according to Overdrive. The Massachusetts owner of Korca Enterprises, Inc. paid a FMCSA investigator $1,000 to halt a negative compliance review last May and was charged on Sept. 26 in a one-count information with bribery of a…

A new piece of legislation is aiming to give Ohio nursing home patients the explicit right to set up hidden monitoring devices in their rooms in order to catch staff in the acts of abuse or neglect.  Current state law is not clear on whether it is legal for patients to covertly set up cameras…

As the Food and Drug Administration expedites reviews, many safety questions are left unanswered about new drugs even after they are approved, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In an examination of 20 new drugs approved by the FDA in 2008, it was found that eight were given expedited…

Doctors in their first year out of medical school are unlikely to display communications skills that can improve a patient’s recovery and lead to greater patient satisfaction, according to a new study from Johns Hopkins University.  Observers recorded the actions of 29 internal medicine interns for three weeks to see whether they used five valued…