Question

Scenario (based on a real Massachusetts case): A patient who was allegedly injured due to the negligence of a hospital in Massachusetts brought a medical malpractice suit against the hospital. During discovery in the case, the patient and his attorney learned that the hospital had lost the patient's medical records, which contained the only documentation of the critical time period during which the alleged malpractice event occurred.

What is the duty of the hospital to properly maintain the record?

Imagine you are on the jury in this case. How does the fact that this patient’s record turned up missing make you feel about the hospital’s case?

What might the judge do in this situation that would make the case more difficult for the hospital to win?

Answer 1

It was the duty of the hospital to maintain the patient records carefully because sometimes these kinds of situations can be observed. At present technology was being growth, each and every aspect was being computerized but hospital management was showing negligence towards the patients by misplacing their records. It was their responsibility to enter all the aspects in the system from patient joining to the patient being discharged. If not possible all the medical records related to the patient should be stored in the safe place and all the documents should have the double copies because sometimes records will be missed that which was seen in the above scenario. If the records was misplaced then physicians doesn’t know about the patient health condition and they cannot give any suggestions for better health at this kind of situations patient leads to death also because patient will not get the treatment at the right time. So to avoid all these kinds of problems hospitals should maintain the records properly and they should be updated after every check up of the patient. Every record should be stored at the safe place or should be entered in the hospital software and security should be provided for the patient records. Mainly this kind of care should be taken by the nurses and the front desk people.

As a jury after listening to this scenario I was shocked and angry towards to the hospital. In records every aspects like patient details, X-rays, medical prescriptions, patient position data and every day checkup data will be available if all these details are missed patient will not get the treatment properly. It will be harder to retake all the data will be harder if the patient was in the critical position. Another thing hospital management should have another master copy of all the data about the patient but they don’t have another copy this particular aspect clearly shows that hospital was being negligent towards the patient’s health. According to my point of view these kind of hospitals should ceased as soon as possible because another patient should not face this kind of problem and many of the hospitals are playing with the lives of people.

According to my point of view judge gives his/her opinion towards the patient because he was in the critical position due to the hospital. If the patient leads to the death hospital management and physicians are being responsible. I think that judge will say that hospital should pay compensation to the patient’s family for their problem and extra care should be taken up to his cure. If anything happen negatively hospital should be closed permanently. This kind of judgment makes the hospital more critical to win the case because patient was in the critical situation only because of the hospital negligence.