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Helping Hand - Outpatient Surgery Magazine - July 2019

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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samples, which they said led to "permanent injury and damage" — specifically, physical and mental pain and suffering past and future, and loss of full mind and body past and future. In court, Mr. Huitt's wife of 45 years and co-plaintiff, Judy, said the cou- ple's active sex life was devastated by Mr. Huitt's post-operative impo- tence and incontinence, caused by nerve damage suffered during the sur- gery. She testified that his penis had become shorter, and that he needs to wear several urinary pads every day. "They never told us they were sorry. Never once," she told the Des Moines Register of Iowa Clinic. It gets worse. The Register also reported that, according to Judy Huitt, the patient who actually had cancer was told he didn't, and was- n't correctly diagnosed for at least another 4 months. How the mix-up occurred Court records show the pathologist explained how she believed the mix- up happened. She testified that a barcode scanner read the barcode in a stack of papers and then, when she reported the findings, the incorrect patient was tied to the results. The pathologist went on to testify that this type of thing had happened occasionally over the previous 10 years, but that she'd caught previous errors. Her testimony also stated that she has changed the way she handles pathology documentation since the incident. Iowa Clinic's insurance company, MMIC, mounted a defense that, by the time of the trial, acknowledged responsibility for the mishap, with Dr. Trueblood and Iowa Clinic's director of pathology admitting negli- gence, while also arguing that Mr. Huitt "sometimes had 'urgency' issues with urination in the past, and that his other health issues could have led to erectile dysfunction in the future," according to the Register. The defense further argued that Mr. Huitt didn't deserve the $15 mil- lion judgment he was seeking, stating that he could still mow his yard, attend the State Fair and pick up his granddaughters from school — J U L Y 2 0 1 9 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 2 3

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