Confidential settlement for a nursing home’s failure to monitor fecal impaction. The nursing home negligently failure to monitor a resident’s bowel movements resulting in bowel injury and subsequent death.

Posted in Nursing Home Neglect, Sweeney Case Results, Sweeney Case Results - Nursing Home Neglect | No Comments »

David Farnbauch will be presenting a talk about Alternatives to Special Needs Trusts on Thursday, May 9th at the 31st Lifetime Achievement Event. The event is presented by the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association and will be held at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis.

Learn more about the Lifetime Achievement Event.

Posted in News | No Comments »

Attorney Dave Farnbauch sits down with INsight at the Sweeney Studios to talk about new federal regulations that make hospitals put their billing rates online.

Host: Welcome back. We’re here at the Sweeney Studios with Attorney Dave Farnbauch. We’re going to talk about new federal regulations that make hospitals put their billing rates online.

Dave: Right.

Host: That seems like a big deal to me.

Dave: Well, for many years, Charity, hospital billing rates, and we’re talking about a large list. I’ve seen some estimates, it could be 40 different thousand, 40,000 different items –

Host: Uh-huh.

Dave: — that a hospital can charge for. They’ve claimed that this information about their billing rates is proprietary information or it’s a trade secret, so hospitals have been very reticent about, sort of, allowing access or disclosure of their billing rates.

Host: So this federal regulation now makes them put these rates online.

Dave: Right.

Host: Why?

Dave: Well, it’s for transparency. I think it’s going to be an effort, part of the effort to sort of drive the cost of healthcare down. In the United States, Charity, 17 percent of our gross national product is spent on health care, and the average family spends more than $9,000 a year for health care. And compared to other countries around the world, we, we spend a lot more of our, you know, disposable income on healthcare, so the politicians are trying to take measures to, you know, drive down the cost of healthcare, and one of the ideas behind this idea is giving consumers data, you know, for comparison about what different hospitals charge for different procedures and things that they do, and so consumers now have access to go online and do that research and compare apples to apples.

Host: So will this drive prices down? Will this, I guess I’m thinking, when I get a bill from the insur-, or not even a bill, but when I get a statement from the insurance and it says, “Here’s what the cost was. Here’s what our discount was. Here’s what you owe.” Because we all know our insurance deductible now is, for most of us, is so high that —

Dave: Right.

Host: — most of the time we don’t meet it.

Dave: The way this new law, I think, is going to impact, you know, particularly what we’re interested in, as lawyers, is hospitals tend to, with, you know, sort of having no transparency –

Host: Uh-huh.

Dave: — about their rates, they tend to target people that don’t, are not covered by a health insurance plan. So there are some people that are uninsured that, obviously, are going to want to know, be able to –

Host: The cash rates —

Dave: — compare rates. And there’s also people that end up at a hospital that’s out of network –

Host: Uh-huh.

Dave: So they get charged with, what we call charge master rates. Those are sort of the, you know, the sticker price that the hospitals charge. They call those their charge master rates. And what we encounter in our practice is when clients of ours are injured in a motor vehicle accident, they’re frequently, will go to a hospital for treatment and these hospitals will file hospital liens where they try to recover their charge master rates, in other words, the sticker price —

Host: Uh-huh.

Dave: — of those charges, from the proceeds of a personal injury case. So what we’ve been trying to do lately, when hospitals file these hospital liens, is to get information about their billing rates, so that we can prove to a judge when we’re resisting paying these sticker price rates for hospital charges, we’ll now be able to show them on their own, you know, website or whatever, what the hospitals are charging for their services and these charge master rates are just ridiculous. So it’s a way that we can get ammunition or information that the hospital puts out to take to court to show to a judge and say, “Look, Judge, these hospital rates that they’re charging, as part of their hospital lien, are just very unreasonable.”

Host: So the rates that they’re going to have to put online are not the charge master rates, they’re the actual rates that, let’s say, the insurance company puts on the —

Dave: Right.

Host: — bottom line —

Dave: No, they, no, they are their charge master rates.

Host: Okay.

Dave: Okay. So most, most people are covered by a health insurance plan, so the different health insurance plan negotiate a much lower –

Host: Lower rate.

Dave: — much lower rate.

Host: Okay. Dave: As does Medicare and Medicaid. They negotiate significantly reduced rates. So most people are not going to be sort of impacted by the charge master rates. But if you’re injured in a motor vehicle accident —

Host: That’s where it’s really going to count.

Dave: — and they file a hospital lien, you’re going to want to have access to those charge master rates, so that you can prove that those rates are unreasonable.

Host: And it really is so, it gets so confusing, which is why, that’s where you come in. You know, my running joke is, “I’m not a doctor, I don’t play one on TV.” Turns out I’m not an attorney, either. And I don’t play one of those on TV, either. And so that’s where having experts like you guys at the Sweeney Law Firm is so very important because it can get really contentious because the hospital, they want their money and people don’t want to pay. It just gets contentious, and so why not let the experts be fighting for you. So if you’ve been in an accident, all you have to do is call the Sweeney Law Firm and let them help you out. They’ll be glad to look at your case and tell you if, if you need to move forward with that. Give them a call today or visit their website, sweeneylawfirm.com. We’ll be right back.

Read the full transcript.

Posted in Videos | No Comments »

Confidential settlement for a nursing home’s failure to notify the family or physician of a resident’s fall resulting in death. A nursing home resident suffered serious injuries in a fall and the facility’s failure to arrange for timely medical treatment at a hospital resulted in the resident’s death.

Posted in Nursing Home Neglect, Sweeney Case Results, Sweeney Case Results - Nursing Home Neglect | No Comments »

Dave Farnbauch sits down with INsight at the Sweeney Studios to go over incidents of injuries to our elders in our nursing homes.

Host: Welcome back. We’re here in the Sweeney Studios. I’m with Dave Farnbauch from Sweeney law firm. We’re going to talk today about a report that was released recently. It was talking about the incidents of injuries to our elders in our nursing home, and it’s staggering numbers. It’s scary how many injuries there are. So let’s talk about this. What federal agency did the study on these injuries in nursing homes?

Dave: So, Charity, it’s a relatively recent study that was issued by the federal government, the Office of the Inspector General. They did a four- year study and they were trying to study the incidents of injury and death in nursing homes caused by substandard nursing home care.

Host: And it studied different kinds of injuries, some not as significant as others, but let’s talk about what this study said. So give me some details on the study.

Dave: Well, it’s, it’s an amazing compilation of statistics about how big of a problem this is –

Host: Uh-huh.

Dave: — in nursing homes. They determined that 22 percent of the patients who had a nursing home stay ended up having what they described as an adverse event and I’d like to read to our viewers what they characterize an adverse event to be. “Either a hospitalization, they were hospitalized for their injuries. They either sustained permanent injury, permanent harm, or they required intervention to save a resident’s life or they actually died as a result of substandard nursing home care.” So think about it. One in five patients who went into the nursing home during the time period that they studied, in a particular year, ended up with one of these types of adverse events. They cost approximately $2.8 billion in hospital care to take care of these residents who were injured as a result of an adverse event and, once again, it just sort of highlights that nursing homes, if you get in the wrong nursing home and don’t receive proper care, can be a very dangerous place.

Host: Let’s talk about some of the take aways. These numbers are staggering. And we all worry about the care of our loved ones. What are the take aways from this study?

Dave: Well, I’d say the major take aways are, what people have to keep in mind is that it’s sort of your responsibility, as a family, to do your homework and try to find the right facility. And even when you place your loved one in a nursing home facility, you have to keep your eyes and ears open to determine whether that nursing home is adequately staffed. Because there’s an old adage amongst lawyers like myself, who do nursing home neglect cases. We believe that virtually any kind of a case, any type of an injury or death in a nursing home, results, all stems from under staffing. Under staffing is the key to all these cases. So if you go to visit your loved one on the evenings, on the weekends, and they don’t appear to be, you know, adequately staffed, that, that’s a sure way to tell that there’s, your loved one is at risk for an injury.

Host: And we can tell if, if our loved one’s been neglected. You can, you can sense that mom hasn’t had her hair brushed or hasn’t had water or, you know what I mean? Even those things that may not right now feel like something that’s caused an injury, but the beginnings of neglect that could then lead to. 

Dave: Well, I mean, if you, if you believe that when you go into a nursing home to visit your loved one that they don’t have adequate staff to meet your loved one’s needs, it’s time to look for another nursing home.

Host: Yeah.

Dave: And another take away from this study is, if you go to a nursing home and they want you to sign an arbitration agreement, where you sign away your legal rights to turn to the court system if they cause an injury or death to your loved one. If they want you to sign an arbitration agreement, where you agree to take a dispute you have with the nursing home through a private corporation that the arbitrator is selected by the nursing home, I would say, my advice would be, start looking for a different nursing home to put your loved one in because that’s a, that’s a pretty sure sign that that nursing home is concerned about their potential –

Host: Uh-huh.

Dave: — liability and they’re trying to take measures to sort of prevent families from being able to exercise their legal right if something does happen to your loved one.

Host: Absolutely. Well, we do want to make sure that our loved ones are taken care of. It’s so important. And, and we do need people to help us take care of them. So if you feel like your loved one has not gotten the care they need and it has led to an injury or some sort of problem, give the Sweeney Law Firm a call. Let them walk through the case with you and see if you have a case, if there’s something you need to do moving forward. Give them a call today or visit their website, sweeneylawfirm.com. We’ll be right back.

Read the full transcript.

Posted in Videos | No Comments »

Dave Farnbauch sits down with INsight at the Sweeney Studios to go over incidents of injuries to our elders in our nursing homes.

Host: Welcome back. We’re here in the Sweeney Studios. I’m with Dave Farnbauch from Sweeney law firm. We’re going to talk today about a report that was released recently. It was talking about the incidents of injuries to our elders in our nursing home, and it’s staggering numbers. It’s scary how many injuries there are. So let’s talk about this. What federal agency did the study on these injuries in nursing homes?

Dave: So, Charity, it’s a relatively recent study that was issued by the federal government, the Office of the Inspector General. They did a four- year study and they were trying to study the incidents of injury and death in nursing homes caused by substandard nursing home care.

Host: And it studied different kinds of injuries, some not as significant as others, but let’s talk about what this study said. So give me some details on the study.

Dave: Well, it’s, it’s an amazing compilation of statistics about how big of a problem this is –

Host: Uh-huh.

Dave: — in nursing homes. They determined that 22 percent of the patients who had a nursing home stay ended up having what they described as an adverse event and I’d like to read to our viewers what they characterize an adverse event to be. “Either a hospitalization, they were hospitalized for their injuries. They either sustained permanent injury, permanent harm, or they required intervention to save a resident’s life or they actually died as a result of substandard nursing home care.” So think about it. One in five patients who went into the nursing home during the time period that they studied, in a particular year, ended up with one of these types of adverse events. They cost approximately $2.8 billion in hospital care to take care of these residents who were injured as a result of an adverse event and, once again, it just sort of highlights that nursing homes, if you get in the wrong nursing home and don’t receive proper care, can be a very dangerous place.

Host: Let’s talk about some of the take aways. These numbers are staggering. And we all worry about the care of our loved ones. What are the take aways from this study?

Dave: Well, I’d say the major take aways are, what people have to keep in mind is that it’s sort of your responsibility, as a family, to do your homework and try to find the right facility. And even when you place your loved one in a nursing home facility, you have to keep your eyes and ears open to determine whether that nursing home is adequately staffed. Because there’s an old adage amongst lawyers like myself, who do nursing home neglect cases. We believe that virtually any kind of a case, any type of an injury or death in a nursing home, results, all stems from under staffing. Under staffing is the key to all these cases. So if you go to visit your loved one on the evenings, on the weekends, and they don’t appear to be, you know, adequately staffed, that, that’s a sure way to tell that there’s, your loved one is at risk for an injury.

Host: And we can tell if, if our loved one’s been neglected. You can, you can sense that mom hasn’t had her hair brushed or hasn’t had water or, you know what I mean? Even those things that may not right now feel like something that’s caused an injury, but the beginnings of neglect that could then lead to. 

Dave: Well, I mean, if you, if you believe that when you go into a nursing home to visit your loved one that they don’t have adequate staff to meet your loved one’s needs, it’s time to look for another nursing home.

Host: Yeah.

Dave: And another take away from this study is, if you go to a nursing home and they want you to sign an arbitration agreement, where you sign away your legal rights to turn to the court system if they cause an injury or death to your loved one. If they want you to sign an arbitration agreement, where you agree to take a dispute you have with the nursing home through a private corporation that the arbitrator is selected by the nursing home, I would say, my advice would be, start looking for a different nursing home to put your loved one in because that’s a, that’s a pretty sure sign that that nursing home is concerned about their potential –

Host: Uh-huh.

Dave: — liability and they’re trying to take measures to sort of prevent families from being able to exercise their legal right if something does happen to your loved one.

Host: Absolutely. Well, we do want to make sure that our loved ones are taken care of. It’s so important. And, and we do need people to help us take care of them. So if you feel like your loved one has not gotten the care they need and it has led to an injury or some sort of problem, give the Sweeney Law Firm a call. Let them walk through the case with you and see if you have a case, if there’s something you need to do moving forward. Give them a call today or visit their website, sweeneylawfirm.com. We’ll be right back.

Read the full transcript.

Posted in 21 Alive Legal Expert Videos, Videos | No Comments »

Attorney Dave Farnbauch sits down with INsight at the Sweeney Studios to talk about new federal regulations that make hospitals put their billing rates online.

Host: Welcome back. We’re here at the Sweeney Studios with Attorney Dave Farnbauch. We’re going to talk about new federal regulations that make hospitals put their billing rates online.

Dave: Right.

Host: That seems like a big deal to me.

Dave: Well, for many years, Charity, hospital billing rates, and we’re talking about a large list. I’ve seen some estimates, it could be 40 different thousand, 40,000 different items –

Host: Uh-huh.

Dave: — that a hospital can charge for. They’ve claimed that this information about their billing rates is proprietary information or it’s a trade secret, so hospitals have been very reticent about, sort of, allowing access or disclosure of their billing rates.

Host: So this federal regulation now makes them put these rates online.

Dave: Right.

Host: Why?

Dave: Well, it’s for transparency. I think it’s going to be an effort, part of the effort to sort of drive the cost of healthcare down. In the United States, Charity, 17 percent of our gross national product is spent on health care, and the average family spends more than $9,000 a year for health care. And compared to other countries around the world, we, we spend a lot more of our, you know, disposable income on healthcare, so the politicians are trying to take measures to, you know, drive down the cost of healthcare, and one of the ideas behind this idea is giving consumers data, you know, for comparison about what different hospitals charge for different procedures and things that they do, and so consumers now have access to go online and do that research and compare apples to apples.

Host: So will this drive prices down? Will this, I guess I’m thinking, when I get a bill from the insur-, or not even a bill, but when I get a statement from the insurance and it says, “Here’s what the cost was. Here’s what our discount was. Here’s what you owe.” Because we all know our insurance deductible now is, for most of us, is so high that —

Dave: Right.

Host: — most of the time we don’t meet it.

Dave: The way this new law, I think, is going to impact, you know, particularly what we’re interested in, as lawyers, is hospitals tend to, with, you know, sort of having no transparency –

Host: Uh-huh.

Dave: — about their rates, they tend to target people that don’t, are not covered by a health insurance plan. So there are some people that are uninsured that, obviously, are going to want to know, be able to –

Host: The cash rates —

Dave: — compare rates. And there’s also people that end up at a hospital that’s out of network –

Host: Uh-huh.

Dave: So they get charged with, what we call charge master rates. Those are sort of the, you know, the sticker price that the hospitals charge. They call those their charge master rates. And what we encounter in our practice is when clients of ours are injured in a motor vehicle accident, they’re frequently, will go to a hospital for treatment and these hospitals will file hospital liens where they try to recover their charge master rates, in other words, the sticker price —

Host: Uh-huh.

Dave: — of those charges, from the proceeds of a personal injury case. So what we’ve been trying to do lately, when hospitals file these hospital liens, is to get information about their billing rates, so that we can prove to a judge when we’re resisting paying these sticker price rates for hospital charges, we’ll now be able to show them on their own, you know, website or whatever, what the hospitals are charging for their services and these charge master rates are just ridiculous. So it’s a way that we can get ammunition or information that the hospital puts out to take to court to show to a judge and say, “Look, Judge, these hospital rates that they’re charging, as part of their hospital lien, are just very unreasonable.”

Host: So the rates that they’re going to have to put online are not the charge master rates, they’re the actual rates that, let’s say, the insurance company puts on the —

Dave: Right.

Host: — bottom line —

Dave: No, they, no, they are their charge master rates.

Host: Okay.

Dave: Okay. So most, most people are covered by a health insurance plan, so the different health insurance plan negotiate a much lower –

Host: Lower rate.

Dave: — much lower rate.

Host: Okay. Dave: As does Medicare and Medicaid. They negotiate significantly reduced rates. So most people are not going to be sort of impacted by the charge master rates. But if you’re injured in a motor vehicle accident —

Host: That’s where it’s really going to count.

Dave: — and they file a hospital lien, you’re going to want to have access to those charge master rates, so that you can prove that those rates are unreasonable.

Host: And it really is so, it gets so confusing, which is why, that’s where you come in. You know, my running joke is, “I’m not a doctor, I don’t play one on TV.” Turns out I’m not an attorney, either. And I don’t play one of those on TV, either. And so that’s where having experts like you guys at the Sweeney Law Firm is so very important because it can get really contentious because the hospital, they want their money and people don’t want to pay. It just gets contentious, and so why not let the experts be fighting for you. So if you’ve been in an accident, all you have to do is call the Sweeney Law Firm and let them help you out. They’ll be glad to look at your case and tell you if, if you need to move forward with that. Give them a call today or visit their website, sweeneylawfirm.com. We’ll be right back.

Read the full transcript.

Posted in 21 Alive Legal Expert Videos, Videos | No Comments »

Dave Sweeney is joined by Mike Herald from Prestwick Group to talk to INsight about Settlement Funds with Structured Settlement Annuities at the Sweeney Studios.

Host: Welcome back to INsight. We’re here in the Sweeney Studios. I am with Dave Farnbauch, from Sweeney Law Firm, Mike Herald from the Prestwick Group. We’re talking about settlement funds with structured settlement annuities.

MR. FARNBAUCH: Correct.

Host: That’s a mouthful and I need to know exactly what those are, so tell me that first.

MR. FARNBAUCH: All right. Well, Charity, structured settlement annuities have been around for quite some time, and what they’re designed to do, it’s kind of a provision in the Tax Code, that allows recipients who receive personal injury settlement funds to, in essence, protect people from themselves. It gives people a special tax advantage that if they put their settlement proceeds into an annuity that is scheduled to pay out at different times, and they can set it up any way they want, then the proceeds in a structured settlement annuity are not taxed, whereas in a regular settlement, if you receive a personal injury settlement and you put it in a bank account or a CD or you invest it in the stock market and it starts earning interest, you pay tax on the interest. In a structured settlement annuity, the money is sitting in an annuity, tax free.

Host: It makes sense that that would be helpful.

MR. FARNBAUCH: Right.

Host: So if somebody has received a settlement and they want to do this, what, how do you start that process? What’s that look like?

MR. HERALD: Well, the process is started by first, we get a phone call from the defendant or the insurance company that says they’ve settled a claim. They say go ahead and contact the claimant or the plaintiff attorney, which we do. We contact that attorney and he usually sets up a meeting with his client. We sit down with the client and we go over specific needs, depending on, you know, obviously, the client’s age, the type of injury, numerous plans can be set up. For instance, if it’s a minor, you can set up a periodic payment plan, where a college fund is set up. You can defer the payments out and they would get, you know, a lump sum for a four- or five-year period for college, then you could set up a life annuity, where they’d get paid a monthly amount for the rest of their life. Depending on their age, it could be an older person that maybe doesn’t want to put money into the stock market. They’re in protection mode instead of growth mode, and we can defer it out to when they’re maybe, you know, 60, 50, 60 years old and give them a monthly payment for, you know, 20 years or so.

Host: Are these common in medical malpractice cases?

MR. FARNBAUCH: They are. The reason, there’s two reasons for that, Charity. First of all, we try to, with some of our clients, because we  know, the research shows that people that receive personal injury funds, settlements, they tend to blow money. That’s just a statistical fact. Just like people who win the lottery. So we try to steer some of our clients into these products to protect themselves from just spending all the money they get in a case. In, in Indiana, in our medical malpractice system, we commonly utilize structured settlement annuities because the law requires

Posted in Videos | No Comments »

Dave Sweeney is joined by Mike Herald from Prestwick Group to talk to INsight about Settlement Funds with Structured Settlement Annuities at the Sweeney Studios.

Host: Welcome back to INsight. We’re here in the Sweeney Studios. I am with Dave Farnbauch, from Sweeney Law Firm, Mike Herald from the Prestwick Group. We’re talking about settlement funds with structured settlement annuities.

MR. FARNBAUCH: Correct.

Host: That’s a mouthful and I need to know exactly what those are, so tell me that first.

MR. FARNBAUCH: All right. Well, Charity, structured settlement annuities have been around for quite some time, and what they’re designed to do, it’s kind of a provision in the Tax Code, that allows recipients who receive personal injury settlement funds to, in essence, protect people from themselves. It gives people a special tax advantage that if they put their settlement proceeds into an annuity that is scheduled to pay out at different times, and they can set it up any way they want, then the proceeds in a structured settlement annuity are not taxed, whereas in a regular settlement, if you receive a personal injury settlement and you put it in a bank account or a CD or you invest it in the stock market and it starts earning interest, you pay tax on the interest. In a structured settlement annuity, the money is sitting in an annuity, tax free.

Host: It makes sense that that would be helpful.

MR. FARNBAUCH: Right.

Host: So if somebody has received a settlement and they want to do this, what, how do you start that process? What’s that look like?

MR. HERALD: Well, the process is started by first, we get a phone call from the defendant or the insurance company that says they’ve settled a claim. They say go ahead and contact the claimant or the plaintiff attorney, which we do. We contact that attorney and he usually sets up a meeting with his client. We sit down with the client and we go over specific needs, depending on, you know, obviously, the client’s age, the type of injury, numerous plans can be set up. For instance, if it’s a minor, you can set up a periodic payment plan, where a college fund is set up. You can defer the payments out and they would get, you know, a lump sum for a four- or five-year period for college, then you could set up a life annuity, where they’d get paid a monthly amount for the rest of their life. Depending on their age, it could be an older person that maybe doesn’t want to put money into the stock market. They’re in protection mode instead of growth mode, and we can defer it out to when they’re maybe, you know, 60, 50, 60 years old and give them a monthly payment for, you know, 20 years or so.

Host: Are these common in medical malpractice cases?

MR. FARNBAUCH: They are. The reason, there’s two reasons for that, Charity. First of all, we try to, with some of our clients, because we  know, the research shows that people that receive personal injury funds, settlements, they tend to blow money. That’s just a statistical fact. Just like people who win the lottery. So we try to steer some of our clients into these products to protect themselves from just spending all the money they get in a case. In, in Indiana, in our medical malpractice system, we commonly utilize structured settlement annuities because the law requires us to produce a certain amount of up-front settlement in order to access the Indiana Patient’s Compensation Fund, so, frequently, when we settle a malpractice claim, we call Mike’s firm, his company, to meet with our clients to show them structured settlement annuities that will pay out money over time, so that we can access the Patient’s Compensation Fund.

Host: And what’s the typical rate of return on a structured annuity?

MR. HERALD: On a structured settlement, it’s going to be anywhere between three and four percent, depending on the interest rates, but it is a great protection plan, like Dave mentioned, from personal spending habits, your own spending habits, especially maybe family or friends. You’ve come into a lot of money and you’re going to have people approach you looking for that money. This is a great way to protect it. It’s guaranteed through the purchase of the annuity and it’s tax free.

Host: Absolutely. And you need it to, you need to be safe. You need protection from yourself and from those around you because it is a lot of money. So if you need more information on this, if you have what you may think is a medical malpractice case, all you have to do is give Sweeney Law Firm a call today or check them out online, sweeneylawfirm.com.

Download the full transcript.

Posted in 21 Alive Legal Expert Videos, Videos | No Comments »

Veteran Richard Sipocz sat down with INsight to describe his medical malpractice experience as a patient of Dr. Hammersley. Sipocz, along with 12 other veterans has filed a class action complaint against the VA doctor.

Host: Welcome back to INsight. We’re here at the Sweeney Studios. I’m here with Richard Sipocz. He is a veteran, served in the U.S. Military, retired from the Air Force.

Richard Sipocz: Yes, ma’am.

Host: Thank you for that.

Richard: Thank you.

Host: And we’re talking to you today because you underwent foot surgery at the VA with Dr. Hammersley.
Richard: Yes.

Host: Let’s talk about that. Tell our viewers how the whole thing started.

Richard: Well, I did 24 years in the Air Force and, of course, I retired here, in Fort Wayne, and it was recommended that I, you know, go to the VA, but bottom line was that Dr. Hammersley was the only podiatrist there, so it was kind of like I had no other choice.

Host: And he told you that you needed this surgery.

Richard: Correct, he did. He, and I was very leery about it, so I asked for a second opinion and I went and seen a local doctor outside of the VA realm and he had suggested, you know, just, there was no surgery that could have been done to correct it, so he suggested fusion, but Dr. Hammersley said he could do something to fix it, so I’d be able to walk again without a cane.

Host: So you had the surgery. How’d things go after that?

Richard: Pretty bad, because I ended up having to have two surgeries because after the first surgery, during the first surgery, he nicked a tendon and he couldn’t finish it up during that one, so he had to close me up and then go back in a second time, and since then, the prognosis is basically fusion or replacement, so I, and it’s very difficult to do any ordinary household chores. Mowing the lawn. I love doing yard work, but I can’t, I’m unable to do that now.

Host: Have you had follow-up appointments with Dr. Hammersley?

Richard: Yes. I had to go down to Marion, where his, I guess he was just stationed out of there, but yes. And, you know, each time I told him, I said, you know, it’s, didn’t get any better, didn’t get any better, but that was about it. That’s where it ended up.

Host: So when did you learn that there was malpractice incidences against Dr. Hammersley?

Richard: The VA had notified me back in 2018, beginning of 2018, that they wanted to talk to me about a doctor. First, they weren’t forthcoming with the information, but then they finally told me that it was concerning Dr. Hammersley and some of the surgeries that they had mentioned that they were unnecessary. They sat me down in a room, there were several administrators, chief surgeon in the VA, and proceeded to tell me how bad my ankle was. They showed me pictures of the deterioration since the surgeries up until, you know, most current, and, basically, that was, you know, an eye opening experience. I didn’t realize what was going on, you know, because I always, well, you know, being a military, you know, veteran, we look for, we don’t, we have, we’re very apprehensive about the VA and, you know, but, but it’s one of the things we get instilled in us while we’re in the military, to stay within that military structure, so it was very difficult.

Host: In that meeting, did they encourage you to file a malpractice claim?

Richard: Yes, ma’am. As a matter of fact, it’s called a tort claim.

Host: Okay.

Richard: They said that I had up to two years to file the tort claim and they gave me all this paperwork and everything on how to do it, the steps on how to do it, like a checklist, so to speak, as well as to add that to my current disability rating.

Host: So what happened when you did that?

Richard: I filled out all the paperwork like I was supposed to. I had received a phone, it took quite a few months, but I received a phone call from a lawyer, seemed like she said that she was representing the VA outside of the Pentagon, and I gave her all the information that she requested and towards the end of the confirma- or that, the conversation we had, she said that she would be remissed if I didn’t tell you that there’s a statute of limitations. And at that moment, I paused. I was like, and that’s when I said, “Then why’d you even tell me?” Because, and then she said, “There’s other avenues,” you know, and all this other stuff, and then, and that’s why I just, I mean, I was so disgusted, you know, and there’s other individuals that are, that this happened to are probably, that are definitely worse off than I am.

Host: So that’s when you reached out to Sweeney Law Firm.

Richard: Actually, I had seen the, the television, the interview with them on TV, and he, that’s when I emailed them and that’s, I mean, he became my lawyer.

Host: You would encourage, if there’s anybody else that’s in your situation, absolutely they should do that.

Richard: Oh, absolutely. I, and, you know, there’s a lot of the individuals out there, a lot of vets out there, that aren’t even aware that this is going on. I mean, it’s just, it’s a systemic problem that, I know that it’s getting a lot better than it was in the past, but we still have a long way to go cleaning up the Veteran’s Administration.

Host: Well, again, we appreciate your service. Thank you for what you’ve done. If you’re a victim) of malpractice or feel like you were a victim of malpractice at the VA, all you have to do is give them a call today or visit their website at sweeneylawfirm.com. We’ll be right back.

Download the full interview transcript.

Posted in Medical Malpractice, Videos | No Comments »