Over 20 million adults over the age of 20 have chronic kidney disease. In 2001, 392,023 U.S. residents were under treatment for End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD). Each year, kidney disease kills more than 14 people out of every 100,000, making it America’s ninth leading cause of death. Medicare spends about $14 billion dollars annually to support and treat ESRD. (The preceding, courtesy of the American Society of Nephrology) Several hundred thousand Americans undergo dialysis treatments each year and over 100,000 have a kidney transplant.

However, treatment for renal failure carries its own risks and patients must educate themselves to these risks in order to protect themselves and help to minimize them. Each year, people die or are injured unnecessarily due to medical errors committed during their treatment for kidney disease.

There are thousands of incidents of dialysis malpractice each year. In fact, in November 2003, the General Accounting Office (GAO), Congress’s watchdog agency, found that a substantial percentage of dialysis facilities do not meet the government’s standards for quality of care. In 2000, Medicare determined that 512 dialysis facilities in the U.S. had 20 percent or more of their patients receiving inadequate dialysis treatments, and nearly 1,700 facilities had 20 percent or more of their patients receiving inadequate care for anemia.

Dialysis medical malpractice involves medication errors, patient falls, vascular access-related events, dialyzer errors, excess blood loss and prolonged bleeding, dialysis machine leaks, malfunctioning machine alarms, improper responses to machine alarms, failing to clear dialysis machines of cleaning solutions, negligent cleaning and filtering of water system at the dialysis clinic, dialysate error (improper use of acid concentrate – the acid part of a two part bicarbonate concentration system - in hemodialysis machine), failing to monitor blood pressure and other vital signs and causing bloodstream infections because of contamination of lines or machinery.

If you are a person on dialysis, it is important to educate yourself to the practices and procedures followed at your clinic in order to secure good medical treatment. In the event, that you did not receive proper treatment and sustained serious injury, you should consult with an experienced medical / dialysis medical malpractice attorney.

If you or a loved one has been injured by malpractice and you would like to speak with an experienced attorney, please contact us to speak to one of the medical malpractice attorneys at Hannon & Boyers, for a free consultation about your legal rights.