A class lawsuit against Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH) has been filed on recently for supposedly getting the wrong operation and removing the wrong part of the patient’s body. The patient was identified as Deborah Craven, a 60-year-old woman who had to underwent surgery in order to remove part of a rib to prevent a cancerous lesion from spreading, said a report from CNN.
Mrs. Craven filed the lawsuit at the Connecticut Super Court on the grounds of medical incompetence from doctors who removed the wrong rib during her surgery last year.
The doctors realized their mistake and even tried to cover it up as they claimed to need a second surgery based on a manipulation of the truth for their own benefit. Doctors from the YNHH removed her seventh rib by mistake instead of her eighth rib, which had a precancerous lesion.
Not taking any chances, a statement was released by the YNHH recognizing they’ve made a mistake and showing their apologies to Mrs. Craven. In addition, the statement also said that the issue was immediately reported to the Connecticut Department of Health.
Craven’s lawyer in the case against the YNHH affirms she never received an apology from neither the Hospital nor any doctor, but rather an attempt to cover up the mistake made by incompetent surgeons. After Mrs. Craven underwent the first surgery on May 18, she went back to the hospital to take an X-ray because she had begun experiencing pain once again.
Being grateful for X-rays
An assistant professor of surgery at Yale, Dr. Anthony Kim was able to be honest with Mrs. Craven when he told her and her husband that surgeons had removed the wrong rib, said her lawyer Joel Faxon. And then, after the patient strictly demanded the first doctor who had been responsible on removing the wrong rib to stay out of her surgery, medical records proved he was involved in the second surgery despite Craven’s demands.
The statement from YNHH claimed that the hospital is ‘committed to providing the safest and highest quality of care possible,’ yet they can’t comply with the patient’s specific requirements. Craven certainly contradicts the statement released by the YNHH, as they refused to comply basic requests, even when they have already performed an erroneous surgery on the patient.
Nevertheless, the hospital will surely have its day in court, and it will be a tough one taking into account that Craven has evidence to prove the negligence of the surgeons at Yale New Havens Hospital, as well as an X-ray showing the wrong part of the body was removed. Stupidly enough, considering that the correct rib had been marked with metal coils and dye before surgery, exactly to prevent this kind of mistakes from happening.
Source: CNN