Jury awards $5.45 million to Bronx man with misdiagnosed staph infection

A Bronx man received a $5.45 million award from after New York medical malpractice lawyers took his case to verdict yesterday, the New York Post reports.

On May 1, 2002, Emanuel Badger visited Montefiore Medical Center's emergency room with complaints that he felt "deathly ill" with "headaches, the shakes and fever." Doctors told Mr. Badger that he had a strain of flu and should return home to recover.

A few days later, his symptoms even worse, Mr. Badger returned to the hospital's emergency room. This time doctors performed a blood test and realized Mr. Badger had a serious staph infection that was affecting his heart.

Two days later, doctors performed heart surgery to replace one of Mr. Badger's valves. Afterwards, Mr. Badger's doctor told him he "was 30 minutes from death."

It is distressing that a man visiting an emergency room with such a severe assessment of his own health can be dismissed as casually as Mr. Badger was. Surely the hospital staff sees some patients who exaggerate or fabricate their symptoms, but it is the staff's responsibility to hear each patient out.

Most patients appreciate how overcrowded hospitals, and especially emergency rooms, can be. They do not expect hours, or even 45 minutes, of a busy doctor's time. What they do expect, and what they should expect, is a doctor who will spend enough time with them to obtain an accurate diagnosis and that, it seems, is what Mr. Badger did not receive.

Given his serious complaints, doctors should have taken Mr. Badger's blood on his first visit to the emergency room. Even if they sent him home to wait for the results, doctors would have discovered his infection days earlier and possibly avoided a complicated surgery.

[New York Post]