$123M hosp ‘bill’
City paid big for doc mistakes
When ZazaModzgvrishvili was in the hospital after he was hit by a car, he assured his concerned family everything was fine.
Modzgvrishvili, then a 27year-old recent medical school grad, broke his leg, fractured several ribs and had a bruised lung.
Hours later, he struggled to breathe and was put into a medically induced coma by doctors at Kings County Hospital on Oct. 6, 2004.
He has been in a vegetative state since.
“It has devastated the family,” his brother, Amiran Modzgvrishvili said.
Twelve years and scores of hospital stays later, the city’s Health + Hospitals Corp. agreed to pay his family $3 million to settle the medical malpractice lawsuit last year.
The family argued doctors Kings County Hospital failed to realize he was suddenly losing the ability to breathe.
Their case was one of 198 cases settled in 2017, records show. The settlement was just a fraction of the $123 million total paid to family members who sued alleging a litany of medical mess-ups.
That was the lowest total over the past five years, records show.
Hospital officials say they have dramatically reduced medical malpractice payouts over the past 10 years in part due to a team that “flags any potential trend” and “develops strategies to eliminate recurring events.”
For instance, nationally, black women fare worse in pregnancy and childbirth, dying at a rate more than triple that of white mothers.
So hospital officials have launched simulation training in all hospital obstetric units to focus on the two top causes of pregnancy-related among deaths African-American women — postpartum hemorrhage (bleeding) and thromboembolism (blood clots).
Still, some medical mistakes with tragic consequences occur.
Doctors at Kings County Hospital Center failed to realize a baby’s oxygen supply was compromised, and inexplicably delayed a Cesarean section on Oct. 8, 2014, according to a lawsuit filed by the infant’s mother, Samantha Miller.
Monitors hooked up to the unborn baby repeatedly showed that his heart rate was dropping, hospital records showed.
“The baby was trying to send a message that he needed to be delivered,” family lawyer Eleni Coffinas said. “It was all there to see on the fetal strips, but no one was listening or watching.”
It took seven hours before doctors realized the severity of the situation, she added
The baby, listed as B.M. in court documents, suffers from a litany of major health issues. That includes a seizure disorder, cerebral palsy and partial blindness. The child also struggles to breathe without being intubated.
Last year, the city paid the family $8.1 million, the top settlement in 2017.
That’s “well within the range” of similar cases involving babies severely injured during childbirth, said attorney Mike Kessler, who handles those types of suits.
“The costs of care can run up to $400,000 a year or more, and that doesn’t include loss of earnings,” he added.
As for Modzgvrishvili, now 41, he needs similar constant care.
“My parents are with him all the time,” his brother said.
The family argued in court that doctors failed to follow best practices that would have helped them figure out that his bruised lung was a more serious injury that needed immediate care.
But city lawyers, in years of court filings, maintained that the hospital’s medical staff was not at fault.
The case was one of the longest-running against the city’s cash-strapped public hospital system, records show.
Hospital officials declined to discuss any specific case, citing federal health privacy regulations.
But a spokesman touted the system’s “pragmatic approach” to close out many longstanding legal cases. NYC Health + Hospitals Corp. — which oversees 11 public hospitals — also tries to secure early settlements that save legal fees.
That wasn’t the case for Raymond Henderson.
He argued that clueless medical staff at Brooklyn’s Kings County Hospital lost part of his severed thumb in July 2014.
The Vietnam veteran, 64, who severed his thumb when a steel door slammed down on his hand, sued the city for $5 million. He settled for $150,000.
A doctor initially told him they were confident the top of his thumb could be reattached.
But the severed thumb piece went missing when he briefly left the room for an X-ray, according to the lawsuit.