Medical Malpractice Verdict Against Boca Raton Healthcare Staffing Firm Highlights Several Important Risks of Birth Injury
When you see advertisements on television for medical malpractice law firms, they often mention birth injury cases as one of the types of medical malpractice cases they handle. Just what is a birth injury, though, and what does it have to do with medical malpractice? Birth injuries occur when an error by a physician or hospital staff member during childbirth or in the treatment of a newborn causes the child to suffer an illness or injury that results in permanent health problems. Even a minor mistake can have lifelong consequences, and the child and his or her family will have to live with the injuries and with the cost of expensive treatments for the rest of their lives. If your child suffered injuries because of a medical error during or shortly after the child’s birth, contact a Florida medical malpractice lawyer.
The Verdict Against Cross Country Healthcare
Cross Country Healthcare is a staffing firm based in Boca Raton, Florida. It provides nurses and other healthcare workers on a temporary basis to work in hospitals in various states. A jury in Massachusetts returned a verdict, in 2019, that Cross Country Healthcare should pay $30.6 million to a family whose son suffers from disabilities because of an error by a nurse employed by Cross Country Healthcare who monitored the child during his 2013 birth at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Aiden Boulter was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, causing oxygen deprivation. He was not breathing and had a very low heart rate. Doctors were able to save him, but Aiden, now six years old, cannot walk, speak, or feed himself without assistance; he has undergone many hospitalizations and surgeries. According to a lawsuit filed by his parents, the cause of Aiden’s birth injury is that the nurse who was responsible for monitoring his heart rate during delivery did not use continuous electronic fetal monitoring. Instead, she used a hand-held device to measure heart rate; the device detected the mother’s heart rate, and the nurse, who was a Cross Country Healthcare employee working temporarily at the hospital, mistook the reading for the baby’s heart rate, despite that she had been working as a labor and delivery nurse for more than 30 years.
Aiden’s parents, Daniel and Kim Boulter, filed a medical malpractice lawsuit shortly after their son’s birth. They named the hospital as a defendant, along with the midwife and the attending obstetrician. They initially sued the nurse individually, but they dropped that case and sued Cross Country Healthcare, as it is legally responsible for the nurse’s actions in the context of her work. Only Cross Country Healthcare went to trial; the other defendants settled before reaching the trial phase.
Reach Out to Us Today for Help
Birth injuries get a lot of publicity because they make for heartbreaking news stories, you might be entitled to compensation if you have been injured as a result of any kind of medical error. Contact Palm Beach Gardens medical malpractice lawyers at Smith, Ball, Báez & Prather Injury Lawyers for a consultation.
