St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan, New York, closed its doors and filed bankruptcy this past April when debts reached $1 billion. What wasn't welcome to many New Yorkers, besides the loss of their neighborhood hospital, was the number of pending medical malpractice lawsuits, as reported by the New York Daily News.
The physicians, previously employed by St .Vincent's, are now also in a quandary about their own personal liability, per the Wall Street Journal.
There are more than 260 people with both medical malpractice and negligence claims unresolved. The assets of the hospital are tied up in Bankruptcy Court.
Claims come from patients who have run the gamut, suffering everything from painful bedsores to brain-damaged babies to mistaken AIDS diagnosis and death.
Jeffrey Korek, a lawyer representing six different families, states that it's "a second nightmare to those families that have already suffered at the hands of negligent physicians at St. Vincent's Hospital."
St. Vincent's had chosen to be self-insured for medical malpractice claims with a trust fund set aside to protect the hospital. The money in the trust, believed to be underfunded up to $250 million, would go to unpaid creditors and not the needy malpractice claimants.
St Vincent's spokesperson, Michael Fagan, said that the hospital's third-party insurance would cover medical malpractice claims, but he would not say how much was available.
Mary Immaculate, another failed hospital, in Queens, New York, went through a similar episode. Closing last year and faced with malpractice claims, one made the news. Shenika Bobb won $5.3 million, after a defibrillator failed to stop her mother's fatal heart attack, but has yet to receive any of it. Bobb is now caring for her seven siblings.
The doctors from St. Vincent's Hospital, concerned about the hospital ending their malpractice insurance coverage in the bankruptcy, could be left personally unprotected.
Doctors may have to purchase their own insurance at a much greater price, about $40,000 per year, for the next several years. Yet, they cling to the idea that the closed-down hospital should continue to provide the coverage.
Because New York State law mandates that patients have two and a half years to file a claim after treatment (10 years for children) these physicians are warranted in their concerns.
Former staffers and doctors have hired a law firm to help negotiate for them. Andrew Bohmart, spokesperson for the consortium of physicians, says it will be disastrous if they are left without coverage. So far the hospital has been unable to turn over its policies to see who is covered, and, for how long.
Fagan, for the hospital, confirmed the discussions, but nothing further.
Dr Charles Carpati, an emergency room doctor at St. Vincent's for over 20 years, and his wife a doctor in the intensive-care unit, did the math: $80,000 a year for their joint medical malpractice insurance, less than $400,000 a year for their previous salaries and no job offers in sight.
St Vincent's was open for 160 years; this is their second bankruptcy filing in the last five years.
If you or a loved one is suffering from care received in a hospital, contact a Medical Malpractice Attorney near you.