Family of late pop singer Prince sues everyone for malpractice

According to the New York Times, “The suit claims that Prince’s death was a “direct and proximate cause” of the hospital failing to appropriately diagnose and treat the overdose, as well as its failure to investigate the cause and provide proper counseling.”

The suit names a hospital and an emergency department physician in Moline, Illinois where Prince’s private jet made an emergency landing when he became unresponsive during a 2016 flight home to Minnesota from a concert in Atlanta.

An employee of his told paramedics who met the plane that he “may have taken a Percocet.” After Prince regained consciousness, he supposedly told the ED doc he had taken two Percocets, but she did not believe him because it had taken two doses of Narcan, an opioid antidote, to revive him.

Friends said he refused all testing including blood and urine toxicology because he was trying to keep his addiction a secret.

"Malpractice" from the viewpoint of a plaintiffs' attorney

Lawrence Schlachter is a neurosurgeon who after 23 years in practice, was forced to stop operating because of a hand injury. He went to law school, became a plaintiffs’ attorney, and wrote a book called “Malpractice.” Although it is intended for patients, physicians might want to read it to learn something about how a plaintiffs’ lawyer thinks.

I’m not surprised that Schlachter cites the heavily extrapolation-based Journal of Patient Safety study claiming 400,000 medical error-related deaths per year and the thoroughly debunked Makary study claiming 251,000 deaths per year due to medical error. He does a little extrapolating of his own and comes up with 562,000 patients per year.

I agree with Schlachter about many issues. He says the best way to avoid becoming a victim of negligence is to take good care of yourself. If you need to be hospitalized, aggressively be your own advocate or have a relative or friend do it. You cannot assume that mistakes will not happen.