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Something definitely went wrong during the hospital stay. You know that something went
wrong because there was a big flurry, big to-do made about it - lots of incident reports,
lots of paperwork filled out. And now, you’re contemplating bringing a lawsuit and you want
to know can you get copies of those incident reports? Would you like to learn the answer?
Come join me. Hi. I’m Gerry Oginski. I’m a New York medical malpractice and personal
injury trial attorney practicing law here in the state of New York. The short answer
is no, you will not be able to get those incident reports. Why is that? Well, the law in New
York is such that those reports are generated for the purposes of quality control. The law
says that you are not permitted to get those incident reports even if they go into detail
about exactly what it was that occurred to you, what the incident was, and what was done
as a result of that. There are laws on the books that say, listen when incident reports
are prepared as a result of something bad that occurred in a hospital, the hospital
is not required to turn over that document. The same thing applies during what’s known
as a “mortality and morbidity meeting.” During these meetings held with doctors, nurses,
and administrators at the hospital, they discuss on a weekly basis adverse events. Things that
should not have happened. Problems that have occurred during the course of a patient’s
hospital stay. And again, they discussed the root cause. What was it that caused this incident?
The purpose of those meetings is to establish quality control and to make sure and try to
prevent these events from occurring again. We would love to be a fly on the wall during
these mortality and morbidity conferences. However, the law does not permit us to (1)
be there, (2) get any notes that are generated as a result of those particular meetings or
any reports that are generated because of those particular meetings. So why do I tell
you about this? I tell you about this because chances are you have questions and concerns
about what happened to you at the hospital. You know that something was done wrong and
you have this gut feeling that people at the hospital know what happened and they’re
just not talking. Well, that may be entirely true. So this just gives you an insight as
to what can happen here and chances are you have questions and concerns. So what I want
you to do is I want you to pick up the phone and call me because I can answer your legal
questions. You can reach me at 516-487-8207 or by email at lawmed10@yahoo.com. I’m Gerry
Oginski, here in New York. Thanks for watching.