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Author: Jerry Vinkler

Obamacare Mandated Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Could Cause Unintentional Problems

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Obamacare Mandated Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Could Cause Unintentional Problems There has been a lot of discussion lately about Electronic Medical Records (EMR). The federal government, as part of the changes implemented by what is known as “Obamacare’, is requiring all health care providers to use electronic medical records. The theory is that these records will be easy...

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Whiplash from a Car Crash

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Whiplash From A Car Crash Car crashes cause all types of injuries – one of the most common is known as a whiplash injury.  Whiplash from a car crash, medically known as cervical strain, usually occurs when the car is struck from behind and the head and neck are thrown forward and whipped backwards.  This sudden, violent movement causes strain on the muscles and tendons in the...

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The Connection Between Advanced Directives and Health Care Costs

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The Connection Between Advanced Directives and Health Care Costs Health care costs keep rising everywhere in the country, except one place, LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Could it be that the good residents of LaCrosse, Wisconsin are healthier than the country as a whole? Possibly. Is it having the Old Style brewery in town that keeps them from using health care services? I’d like to...

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Truth About the Number of Medical Malpractice Case Filings in Cook County

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Truth About The Number Of Medical Malpractice Case Filings In Cook County In conversations with family, friends and others about being a personal injury lawyer, the topic invariably turns to medical malpractice and the “myths” about the number of lawsuits filed, doctors fleeing the state and a system out of control. People get half-truths and odd bits of information here and...

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$1,000,000 Judgment in Cook County

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$1,000,000 Judgment In Cook County Cook County lawsuit for $365,000 against Olympia Fields Osteopathic Hospital and Medical Center and obtained a $1,000,000 judgment against the physician on behalf of an Orland Park couple whose daughter died at age 24 hours. The hospital was responsible for a physician who was negligent in not giving antibiotics for Group Beta Strep. ...

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Personal Injury Cases Are Six Person in Illinois

Highlights of Past News Items

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Highlights of Past News Items Jerry Vinkler Named Super Lawyer For 2012 Jerry Vinkler has once again stood above the rest with his work in medical malpractice law in Illinois. Mr. Vinkler has been honored as a Super Lawyer for 2012. This is Mr. Vinkler’s fourth consecutive award, having also been named in 2009, 2010 and 2011. This award designates Jerry Vinkler as one of the...

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Are You Suffering From Chronic Back Pain?

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Are You Suffering From Chronic Back Pain? As personal injury lawyers we have handled many cases for clients that have suffered back injuries.  All of these clients have had various treatments, be it surgery, injections, medications or physical therapy.  Some have met with more success than others.  A few clients have never found relief and live with the pain for the rest of...

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Dangers of Distracted Driving

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Dangers of Distracted Driving The esteemed New England Journal of Medicine recently posted a fun video about the dangers of distracted driving.  While we all know the dangers of talking on the cell phone,  this study confirms that tasks that taking our eyes off the road results in an increased risk of an at-fault motor vehicle collision. The study looked at the difference between...

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An Interesting Look at Medical Errors and Obamacare

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An Interesting Look at Medical Errors and Obamacare I came across this interesting broadcast about Obamacare’s effects on payments to medical care providers.  One of the prongs of the new health care plan is to experiment with different pay models.  The radio program offers a very interesting look at the health care industry and some of the confusing ways that providers are...

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Four Things You MUST Do After A Motor Vehicle Accident

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Four Things You MUST Do After A Motor Vehicle Accident If you are ever involved in a motor vehicle accident or other incident such as a fall in a store or some other occurrence where you sustain an injury, you will hear things from lots of people about what you should or should not do. While no two situations are the same, a few of the following tips will be useful: 1. Get an...

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Automobile Safety

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Automobile Safety I was listening the other day to a podcast on the economic website Freakonomics and heard this fascinating history of our love affair with cars and the evolution of their safety over the past 100+ years.  One interesting tidbit is that the seat belt was one of the most effective safety advances and also one of the cheapest to develop, but took a long time to...

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Are Your Social Media Posts Putting Your Case at Risk?

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Are Your Social Media Posts Putting Your Case At Risk? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tinder, Vine, You Tube,  etc.  Social media is out there in all forms and people are using it daily as they document their lives to their friends and strangers alike. If you are making a claim for injuries you sustained as a result of someone’s negligence you need to be aware of how that post...

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Nursing Home Neglect Can Be Due to Inadequate Staffing

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Nursing Home Neglect Can Be Due to Inadequate Staffing Nursing homes in Illinois recently got a grade F by an advocacy group that promotes better care for residents.  The main reason for the failing grade is that nursing homes in Illinois fail to provide adequate staffing which affects patient care in numerous and myriad ways. If you or someone you know is a resident of a...

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Medical Errors

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Medical Errors How many people a year die in the hospital from medical mistakes as compared to other causes of death in the United States? In 2011, there were 31,000 Americans who died as a result of a gunshot wound. In 2011, there were 33,000 motor vehicle accidents that resulted in death. These types of death command a significant portion of the media coverage in our society. Yet,...

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Auto Insurance Coverage Amounts

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Auto Insurance Coverage Amounts In Illinois, drivers of motor vehicles are required to buy minimum insurance coverage to pay for damages they may cause to others while driving.  The minimum coverage required is $20,000 per person, $40,000 total per accident. That means for any given accident, the total amount of coverage available to any one person injured by a driver carrying...

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Are Nursing Homes Safe?

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Are Nursing Homes Safe? Nursing homes, assisted living centers, senior living centers, convalescent centers, skilled nursing facilities.  They go by any number of names, but are Nursing Homes safe?  A recent episode of the award winning PBS series Frontline takes a look at our country’s nursing homes and asks a lot of unnerving questions about how they are run and the risks...

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Illinois Uninsured Motorist Coverage

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Illinois Uninsured Motorist Coverage When buying and reviewing your auto insurance coverage, a very important area to look at are “med pay,” “uninsured coverage” and “underinsured coverage” These are items that we are all required to pay for by your insurance company and the State of Illinois, unless you specifically decline the coverage. I’ll explain each of these terms and...

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Understanding Auto Insurance Coverage

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Understanding Auto Insurance Coverage Navigation Of Auto Insurance Coverage It happened to me, again, yesterday. I took a call from someone who was involved in a car accident. It wasn’t his fault, but he was really out of luck with regard to having his damages covered. Why? The other person didn’t have any insurance. The guy who called me couldn’t drive his car because of the...

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Medical Errors Increase Causing More Unnecessary Deaths In Hospitals

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Medical Errors Increase Causing More Unnecessary Deaths In Hospitals Medical errors have continued at an unacceptable rate for almost two decades. Medical errors in hospitals alone result in over 90,000 preventable deaths per year according to the staff at the Department of Health and Human Services. In 2010 the U.S government started the Partnership for Patients: Better Care,...

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Hot Coffee Lawsuit

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Hot Coffee Lawsuit An Illinois personal injury attorney can affect change in society by filing certain lawsuits. The media and the PR firms and corporations that influence them may label some of these cases as frivolous, but are they really? Illinois personal injury attorney, Jerry Vinkler has talked about the McDonalds’ hot coffee lawsuit before, and it bears repeating. The...

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Do You Need an Illinois Malpractice Lawyer?

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Do You Need An Illinois Malpractice Lawyer? An Illinois malpractice lawyer should be contacted if you or a family member suffers a hospital acquired illness or injury that could have been prevented. While problems within the U.S. health care system are widely recognized, a recent report by Commonwealth Fund reports that “Chicago is a health care market marked by high costs and...

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Are Hospital Errors Being Reported?

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Are Hospital Errors Being Reported? Preventable medical errors and infections harm one in four hospital patients, according to a new study by the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS). As an Illinois personal injury attorney, I find these numbers to be staggering. While all hospitals included in the study had incident reporting systems in place and administrators claimed...

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Construction Accidents, Who is at Fault?

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Construction Accidents, Who is at Fault? Who Is At Fault In Construction Accidents? Construction accidents happen all too often. Who is responsible for ensuring the safety of workers at a construction site? The general contractor is the obvious answer, but other parties may share in the responsibility. An Illinois personal injury attorney can help you navigate construction negligence...

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Tort Reform

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Tort Reform Any Chicago area resident who has been seriously injured should hire an Illinois personal injury attorney. Unfortunately, tort reform and caps on damages weaken our civil justice system and a lawyer’s ability to fight for damages. Because the concept of tort reform is easily misunderstood, many Americans have unknowingly given up their rights. HOT COFFEE, last year’s...

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Medical Errors Costing U.S. Billions

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Medical Errors Costing U.S. Billions TUESDAY, April 8 (The Washington Post- Health Day News) — From 2004 through 2006, patient safety errors resulted in 238,337 potentially preventable deaths of U.S. Medicare patients and cost the Medicare program $8.8 billion, according to the fifth annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study. This analysis of 41 million Medicare patient...

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3 Indicted on 28 Counts in Nevada

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3 Indicted on 28 Counts in Nevada Doc And CRNAs Indicted On 28 Counts In Nevada Hep C Outbreak After a 2-year criminal investigation into the Las Vegas-area hepatitis C outbreak, a grand jury has indicted a physician and 2 nurse anesthetists on 28 felony counts, including racketeering, patient neglect and insurance fraud. Dipak Desai, MD, and nurse anesthetists Ronald Ernest...

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Poor Infection Control At Many Surgery Centers

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Poor Infection Control At Many Surgery Centers CHICAGO, June 8, 2010 – A new federal study finds many same-day surgery centers — where patients get such things as foot operations and pain injections — have serious problems with infection control. Failure to wash hands, wear gloves and clean blood glucose meters were among the reported breaches. Clinics reused devices meant for...

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Hospital Closing Leave Many New Yorkers in a Lurch

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Hospital Closing Leave Many New Yorkers in a Lurch The closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital has left yet another wounded group in the lurch – hundreds of New Yorkers who are suing the hospital for medical malpractice.  More than 260 people pursuing malpractice and negligence claims against the bankrupt hospital are in legal limbo.  With St. Vincent’s assets going to Bankruptcy...

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Many Surgery Centers are Poor at Infection Control

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Many Surgery Centers Are Poor At Infection Control CHICAGO, June 8, 2010 – A new federal study finds many same-day surgery centers — where patients get such things as foot operations and pain injections — have serious problems with infection control. Failure to wash hands, wear gloves and clean blood glucose meters were among the reported breaches. Clinics reused devices meant...

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