Additional Resources
How To Make a Medicare Complaint
If the medical care you are concerned about was paid for by Medicare, you can file a complaint with Medicare, and they will usually investigate and respond to your complaint. We have seen Medicare tell a patient that its investigation showed there was substandard care. Medicare does not compensate for substandard care.
If you are our client, we want to talk to you before filing any complaint.
Learn more | How to make a Medicare complaint
How to Research a Nursing Home
It’s a good idea to research a nursing home before moving in, and we will research nursing homes involved in injuring our clients. A good general article about researching nursing homes can be found below:
Learn more | Finding a nursing home
Medicare has detailed information about a nursing home’s history that be accessed at the website called Nursing Home Compare:
Visit | Nursing Home Compare
You can also see if lawsuits have been filed in Missouri state court against a nursing home by checking the website of Missouri court files called Case.net. For information on how to search Case.net, visit How to Use Case.net on this website.
How to research a Hospital
Medicare’s website called Hospital Compare has information from hundreds of hospitals about the quality of care, payment and value of care information, and a guide to choosing a hospital. You can look up individual hospitals and compare hospitals in an area by zip code.
Visit | Hospital Compare
How to Research a Surgeon
ProPublica is an independent, non-profit news organization. On their website called Surgeon Scorecard, ProPublica used Medicare data to calculate death and complication rates of surgeons performing 8 elective procedures from 2009–2013 including knee and hip replacements, spinal fusions, gallbladder and prostate surgeries. You can research a surgeon’s death and complication rates for these surgeries on their website:
Learn more | Propublica Surgeon Scorecard
How To Research a Health Care Provider
You can see if lawsuits have been filed in Missouri state court against an individual health care provider by checking the website of Missouri court files called Case.net. Visit the Case.net page.
You can research a doctor’s financial relationships with drug and medical device companies below:
Learn more | openpaymentsdata.cms.gov
How to Make an Elder/Disabled Complaint with Missouri
Reports of abuse, neglect and exploitation of the elderly and disabled can be made to the state. The reports can be for individuals in the community or in long term care facilities like nursing homes. The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services is required to investigate complaints.
If you are our client, we would want to talk to you before filing any complaint.
Learn more | Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services
How To Make A State Complaint About A Particular Missouri Doctor Or Nurse
The Missouri Board of Registration for Healing Arts is the state licensing board for doctors and nurses and other health care professionals. Patients can make quality of care complaints to the Board at:
Learn more | Missouri Board of Registration for Healing Arts
In our judgment, these complaints take a long time and don’t seem to really affect a health care provider’s ability to practice unless it’s outrageous conduct or a number of different complaints are found valid.
If you are our client, we would want to talk to you before filing any complaint.
How to Look up Missouri Companies
Missouri companies can be researched on the Missouri Secretary of State’s website. There you can see documents filed with the state, find out the such things as company’s history, officers, incorporators, offices, and find out who gets served with the lawsuit in the event of suit.
To do a business search, click the link below:
Learn more | Missouri Department of State
You can also see if lawsuits have been filed in Missouri state court against a company by checking the website of Missouri court files called Case.net. For information on how to search Case.net, visit How to Use Case.net on this website.
How to Research Your Medical Device Or Drug With The FDA
The federal Food & Drug Administration is in charge of regulating most medical devices and pharmaceuticals that are sold in the United States. As part of their regulation of the industry, the FDA collects reports about injuries, also called adverse events, that people have sustained as a result of defective and dangerous medical devices and drugs.
The FDA also encourages people who are injured by defective medical devices or drugs to report their incidents and injuries to the Department’s MedWatch program. According to the FDA voluntary reporting by injured patients, and their doctors, can help the FDA identify unknown risk for approved medical products.
If you are planning on seeking legal advice about your injuries your lawyer may wish to talk with you before submitting a report to MedWatch.
Dangerous drugs/medications and the FAERS database
According to the FDA, the manufacturers of pharmaceutical drugs are required to report adverse events to the FDA for inclusion when they learn that any of their devices may have caused or contributed to a death or serious injury. Hospitals which know that a medical device or product caused a serious injuries are asked to voluntary report suspected adverse events connected to a particular drug or medication.
If you suspect you have been injured by a defective medicine or supplement you can search online for other injuries from the same product on the FDA’s FAERS database — FAERS is short for FDA Adverse Event Reporting System. The database contains information on food, drugs, supplements and other medical remedies which may have malfunctioned or caused a death or serious injury. FAERS is searchable by drug name or reaction type.
Learn more | FAERS database
Medical Devices & the MAUDE database
According to the FDA, it has been keeping an electronic record of adverse reports from medical devices since approximately 1991. The manufacturers of the devices are required to report adverse events to the FDA for inclusion in the MAUDE database when they learn that any of their devices may have caused or contributed to a death or serious injury.
If you suspect you have been injured by a defective medical device you can search online for other injuries from the same product on the FDA’s MAUDE database — MAUDE is short for Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience. The database contains information on medical devices which may have malfunctioned or caused a death or serious injury. MAUDE is searchable by product name (e.g. Elevate Vaginal Mesh, Magnum hip replacement), model or catalog number (if you know it), or by class of device or type of injury if you’re not sure about your product name. There is also a simple key-word search feature where you can submit just a few words with the main information you do know about the product. You can also search to see whether a particular product has been recalled by the manufacturer for a problem.
Learn more | MAUDE database
How to Research Your Injuries & Issues in Medical Publications
The medical community — including the manufacturers of medical devices and drugs — has a long history of sharing information about medical care through what are called “peer reviewed journals.” These are essentially periodic magazines in which doctors and other health professions submit articles discussing a particular topic or research area for review by their peers. If the article is deemed sufficiently reliable, it will be published in the magazine where doctors and other healthcare professions from all over the world can read about current and past issues with healthcare and medicine.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM) is required by law to collect and preserve this biomedical literature. The electronic version of this database of literature is known as PubMed Central, or PMC.
While the journal articles can sometimes be very technical and difficult to interpret, you can search the PubMed database for your particular medical condition or issue to see whether others have experienced something similar. You can also search PubMed to investigate a proposed surgery and learn about frequent complications, usual recovery times and similar details, and to see what topics and issues your doctor has published articles about. PubMed can also be helpful to search for guidelines and standards issued by particular medical societies (e.g. The American Heart Association or The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) without having to search each society’s webpage.
Easier to read articles, written for patients and collected by the National Library of Medicine, can be accessed below: