Mount Sinai Hospital is a well-known hospital that borders on Manhattan’s East Harlem and Yorkville neighborhoods. Originally founded in 1852, the center now includes the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, which currently ranks among America’s top 20 medical schools. Unfortunately, this ranking isn’t enough to prevent medical malpractice from occurring at the hospital, and one of its more shocking cases involved the in-utero death of an infant.
On 13 December 2017, Jana Diaz arrived at Mount Sinai’s Midwood’s facility in Brooklyn at 1 am due to cramps and bleeding. The hospital did not have a maternity ward or an OBGYN on staff, and no one was immediately called when it became apparent that they did not have the knowledge or facilities needed to treat Jana correctly. In fact, Jana states that it took 90 minutes for the emergency care doctor-on-call to see her and perform an exam and that her unborn baby’s heart rate had dropped to 104 by then. Despite this, Jana says that the hospital staff was more concerned with ensuring that her paperwork was being correctly filled in as opposed to managing her clinically. Jana’s lawyer states that as a clear obstetrical emergency, an emergency C-section should have been performed immediately.
Mount Sinai officials indicated that Jana would need to be transported to another hospital for the surgery and that she would be transferred to their main hospital on the Upper East Side – an hour’s drive away. When Jana objected and stated that she wanted to be transported to the closest hospital that could treat her, the officials said that she had to remain “in-network” and thus go to one of their facilities. Additionally, Mount Sinai used a private ambulance instead of calling 911 for a city ambulance, which caused Jana’s transfer to take even longer and resulted in her only receiving the care she required four hours later.
As a result of these unacceptable series of events, Jana’s unborn child was declared dead at 5 am due to a ruptured placenta, and she was forced to deliver her stillborn child. Jana has since filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the hospital, stating that negligence, recklessness, and carelessness is what caused her child’s death. The case is currently ongoing.
Legal Matters
A birth injury is a type of injury that you, as a mother, or your baby suffer before, during, or just after the birthing process. You will know if the birth injury is as a result of medical malpractice, as they occur when a healthcare professional acts negligently and fails to uphold the standardized quality of care that is expected in their medical profession and the medical community.
You must begin the process of filing a medical malpractice lawsuit as quickly as possible, as there are certain laws and statutes of limitations that each state needs to adhere to. Therefore if you live in NYC, you should make contact with a qualified medical malpractice lawyer who can guide you towards fulfilling the four legal elements that are required for your claim to be valid. Based on these elements, your NYC medical malpractice attorney will help you prove that:
- Your healthcare professional had a professional and legal obligation to provide adequate care to you and your child
- Your healthcare professional breached this obligation by failing to provide an appropriate standard of care
- Your (and/or your child’s) injury resulted from the breach of this obligation
- That the injury you (and/or your child) sustained is something that the legal system can provide compensation and redress
Contact
If it is your belief that either you or your child may have experienced some form of birth-related medical malpractice injury, then please contact the medical malpractice lawyers of Rosenburg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff LLP in NYC today.
You can speak to one of our medical malpractice attorneys when you are ready to talk. We are always ready to listen — Call 212-344-1000 for a free, confidential consultation.
