Johnson v. Misericordia Community Hospital

Johnson v. Misericordia Community Hospital

The case of Johnson v. Misericordia Community Hospital was filed by James Johnson suing the hospital. The decision was preceded by a surgical procedure that was conducted by Dr Salinsky of the Misericordia Community Hospital. The doctor endeavored to remove a pin fragment from Johnson’s right hip, though his efforts were in futility. During the surgical operation, the doctor, unfortunately, interfered with the artery and femoral nerve. Consequently, Johnson developed a permanent paralysis of his right thigh muscles, and this caused body weakness, dysfunctionality and atrophy. All this happened in 1975, and in 1976 Johnson sued Dr Salinsky for the negligence of duty (Davenport III, 2017). Additionally, Johnson sued the hospital of negligence. He claimed that the hospital was negligent because of its imprudent and careless of Dr Salinsky as one of its employees and permitting the doctor to perform an orthopedic surgical procedure within the hospital when it understood, or ought to have understood that the doctor was unqualified to perform such a high-class operation. Johnson also added that the hospital ignored to evaluate the qualities and abilities of Dr Salinsky to perform orthopedic surgery, and the hospital knew or should have known that he did not have such potential.

Before the court proceedings, Salinsky and his insurer settled with Johnson and were released from the case upon payment of 140,000 US Dollars (Zaremski, 2017). However, Salinsky issue of whether he was negligent in his duty was a case that could withstand court proceedings. Johnson had to prove before a court of law that Salinsky practised negligence of duty. During the trial, an unchallenged testimony revealed that the surgical operation undertaken by Dr Salinsky did not match the reputable practice of orthopedic surgery. Notably, the court identified that the doctor was careless with the medical treatment accorded to Johnson, which according to the court ruling accounted for twenty per cent of the causal negligence and remaining eighty per cent went to the hospital. Dr Salinsky heeded to the ruling and did not file an appeal.

The court later came to realize that Dr Salinsky recruitment did not follow due procedure. The hospital medical staff coordinator, Mrs Jane Bekos, alluded that the appointment of Salinsky as medical staff of the hospital was engineered by David Scott, who was the then hospital administrator. Hollowell (2018), states that the court also identified that the appointment of Salinsky and his orthopedic privileges were not approved until 1973. It was also revealed that Salinsky approved his appointment. Salinksy later rose to the position of chief of staff immediately after joining the hospital. The court could not determine, neither from its research nor the hospital records, the criteria followed for the promotion of Salinsky. The court found that the hospital was negligent in granting Salinsky orthopedic privileges and had to pay 405,000 US Dollars as damages (Hollowell, 2018).

In my opinion, I agree with the court statement that the public expects a modern hospital to exercise due diligence while selecting its medical staff and granting of special privileges. The appointing authority must vet the applicants to determine their credibility, competence and experience. Although the appointing authority may delegate such authority to the credentials committee, the appointing authority is mandated to ensuring that qualified physicians are recruited to medical staff. Additionally, the appointing authority has to conduct periodic evaluations of the medical staff to ascertain their credibility. In the case of Johnson v. Misericordia Community Hospital, the staff coordinator of the hospital revealed that Dr Salinsky did not undergo any vetting, which was contrary to the public expectations (Sundermeyer, 2019). .

The public also expects the hospital to evaluate the experience of any medical staff to determine their competence from experience. For instance, if Misericordia Community Hospital would have conducted the referees of Salinsky, it would have identified that Doctors Hospital had withdrawn Salinsky’s orthopedic privileges and demanded him to obtain a consultation before conducting any surgical procedure and that Mt. Sinai Hospital had accorded Salinsky privileges to perform simple orthopedic surgeries but later revoked the privileges after realizing he was not using clinical departments.

The public also expects to get quality medical care and treatment from modern hospitals, and the public expects that once they avail themselves in the modern health facilities, the hospital staff will commit themselves as possible as they can to treat them. For instance, Johnson anticipated that he would get quality care and treatment from Misericordia Community Hospital, only to end up developing more complications as a result of the hospital’s hiring of unqualified and on-competent medical staff. The public also perceives a modern hospital as one that has the relevant equipment to facilitate surgical operations. Such equipment includes radio nucleide imaging thermography and CAT-scan, all these geared toward according the public quality treatment (Zaremski, 2017).

References

Davenport III, G. (2017). Johnson v. Misericordia Community Hospital: Corporate Liability of Hospitals Arrives in Wisconsin. Justia US Law.

Zaremski, M. J. (2017). Hospital corporate liability: The walls continue to tumble. Medicolegal news, 9(2), 13-20.

Hollowell, E. E. (2018). Does hospital corporate liability extend to medical staff supervision?. Law, Medicine and Health Care, 10(6), 225-236.

Sundermeyer, M. S., & Murphy, P. A. (2019). Prevention of hospital liability for granting privileges to unqualified physicians. Gastrointestinal endoscopy clinics of North America, 5(2), 433-445.