Haven Hospice Announces Shutdown of Affiliate Hit With $5m Fine

Hardly a month after its affiliate was hit by a $5 million federal fine, Haven Hospice announced its subsidiary, VNA and Hospice of the Florida Keys, will shut down by February’s end. “Haven knowingly submitted false claims to the Medicare and Medicaid programs for medically unnecessary hospice care for certain patients who had lengths of








$40M Settlement Reached Between Delaware County Family and Hospital, Ending Medical Malpractice Case

Recently, a Delaware County jury awarded “$40 million to the family of a 6-year-old who suffered a spinal injury during birth.” The settlement is the largest of its kind in the county, but how will it be divided up, and what was the lawsuit about that resulted in such a large settlement? For starters, the settlement is related to a lawsuit filed on behalf of Grayson Charlton, a young girl who has been paralyzed “from her mid-chest down” since birth due to a medical error. According to the settlement agreement, “$10 million will go towards past and future pain and suffering, while the rest of the award will go toward future economic damages.”



$12M Settlement Awarded in Medical Malpractice Case

A recent medical malpractice lawsuit ruled against the University of Arizona Health Network, now Banner-University Medical Center Tucson and awarded $12 million to a “Tucson woman in a vegetative state” due to a medical error. The largest medical malpractice lawsuit in Pima County in the last decade, the suit stems from an incident that occurred on September 13, 2013. In that day, Esmeralda Tripp visited the ER alone and had “been to the same emergency room multiple times dealing with the same issue,” seizures. According to her daughter, Jamaica Tripp-Serrano, she was “generally treated with a Vitamin K shot or plasma and released.” In addition to the frequent seizures, Tripp was also on “Coumadin, a blood thinner medication.”