THE CITY HAS doled out $134 million this year for medical mishaps at its 11 public hospitals, some during child birth and others resulting in permanent disabilities.
And taxpayers are picking up the tab — more than half a billion dollars in the last four fiscal years alone, city records show.
The horrors are spelled out in court documents, including a case at Queens Hospital Center where a baby suffered a skull fracture and his heart rate dipped and rose wildly during birth.
Deidre Thompson began having contractions on June 4, 2008. A relative raced her to the hospital’s labor suite for the birth of her first child. She first saw a doctor about 9:20 a.m. and they determined that her baby was not moving down the birth canal, according to a lawsuit. So they tried to induce labor by administering the drug Pitocin to help increase contractions.
Thompson wasn’t seen by a doctor again between 11:30 a.m. 2:45 p.m. Then over the next seven hours, the baby’s heart rate dropped from 120 beats per minute down to 90 beats per minute, reducing the oxygen to his brain.
But rather than proceed with a C-section, the city doctors kept Thompson pushing for almost two hours, leading to a dangerous increase in the baby’s heart beat.
“In order to get the baby through, they were pushing on her stomach,” said her lawyer, Annamarie Bondi-Stoddard.
By the time the baby, Sebastian, was born, his heart rate was over 200 beats per minute and he was not breathing on his own. He was having seizures. A CT scan of his brain later showed bleeding and a skull fracture.
Sebastian is permanently disabled and has difficulty walking and speaking, records show. His mother was awarded $5.3 million, with roughly half being placed in a state fund to cover Sebastian’s medical bills.
The troubling case was one of 270 cases completed in the fiscal year ending June 30, resulting in payouts of $134 million — down slightly from $135 million during the same time period last year, records show.
Another Queens hospital missed a life-threatening brain hemorrhage. A Bronx hospital, court records show, lacked the appropriate equipment to immediately resuscitate a baby who as a teen can barely speak.
Magdalena Villalba-Carrillo, 44, raced to the emergency room at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens on Dec. 4, 2009. She was complaining of a severe headache, court records show. Doctors released the Queens woman three days later, failing to recognize that she was suffering from an aneurysm, a lawsuit alleges.
Nine days later she collapsed on a sidewalk with a massive brain hemorrhage while leaving a nutrition store in Queens. She underwent emergency surgery and has been in a vegetative state ever since at Coler Goldwater Specialty Hospital & Nursing Facility.
“The doctors failed to realize what was happening,” said Joseph Kelly, a lawyer who helped negotiate a $4.9 million settlement to pay for her mounting medical bills.
Officials with the Health and Hospitals Corp. declined to comment on the individual cases but noted that payments have gone down since 2003, when settlements reached an all-time high of $193 million.
“When an injury occurs, there is no doubt it is devastating to the patient and their family. And we recognize how difficult it is for all involved,” HHC spokeswoman Ann Marengo said.
Those efforts did little for Jamahl Dawson, 13.
In May 1999, his mother, Carmen Garcia, was diagnosed with preeclampsia, a severe childbirth complication that can only be treated by delivering the baby. Doctors quickly induced labor at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in the Bronx.
But when the Bronx woman gave birth two hours later there was no doctor or proper equipment in the room to help to quickly resuscitate Jamahl, who weighed 3.6 pounds, according the family’s lawyer, Christopher Lennon.
The city settled with the family for $4.5 million.
Jamahl barely speaks and needs a walker to move around, according to court documents.
rblau@nydailynews.com
