There is a common misconception that non-profit organizations like UPMC and AHN can’t be sued in cases of medical malpractice. This is generally false for the major hospitals, as they are legally separate from the state. They cannot hide behind “governmental immunity” to avoid paying for catastrophic mistakes.
More than 200 patients treated at UPMC Jameson Hospital may have been exposed to improperly cleaned ultrasound probes. Hospitals must follow strict procedures for the cleaning and disinfection of ultrasound probes and similar instruments that doctors insert inside patients’ bodies. Regrettably, when hospitals fail to properly train and supervise their employees, bugs can remain on or inside medical instruments due to improper cleaning.
Attorney Brendan Lupetin has filed a class-action lawsuit against University of Pittsburgh Medical Center on behalf of a patient that was exposed to tuberculosis by a UPMC emergency room nurse in on October 31, 2017.
The hospital, after discovering in March 2018 that the nurse was infected with TB believes that patients were exposed during the period of October 28, 2017 – February 28, 2018. The hospital informed 4,700 patients of the potential exposure that they needed to be tested for tuberculosis.
A deadly mold outbreak at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center hospital campuses Montefiore, Presbyterian and Shadyside in Western Pennsylvania has been linked to contaminated bed linens from Paris Healthcare Linen Services. The contaminated sheets and linens were distributed by Paris Linen’s DuBois facility in Clearfield County; the same location which provides linens to all UPMC hospital campuses. The attorneys of Lupetin & Unatin are currently (as of October 31, 2017) representing four families in cases against the UPMC hospital system and Paris Companies in which multiple transplant patients have died as a result of a fungal infection.
Olympus Corporation concealed information about the potential spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria through the use of their endoscopes. The spread of bacteria through the scope is linked to the deaths of 35 patients in the United States since 2013.
