Medical Mistakes Bill Advances At Capitol

(AP) DENVER A bill that would allow Coloradans full access to a physicians' history was approved by the House on Wednesday and sent to the Senate. The bill (House bill 1331) was named after Centennial resident Michael Skolnik, who died at age 25 due to what lawmakers called medical negligence. They said Skolnik underwent unnecessary brain surgery after he was
misdiagnosed with a brain cyst.

Governor Ritter signs Senate Bill 66

Senate Bill 07-066 was signed by Governor Ritter on Thursday, March 22, 2007. Senate Bill 66 was sponsored by Senator Ken Gordon and Representative Alice Madden. SB 66 allows guardians of persons with disability, whose medical malpractice cases go to trial, have the same rights, op­tions and obligations as far as in­vesting the verdict money as they would have had if the case had been settled. SB 66 cures an in­equity of the law that treated these two similar classes of peo­ple quite differently depending upon whether they were forced to trial or not.

Malpractice Database Now Online

Consumers have a new tool to help them avoid trouble, when picking a doctor. They can now access a database of malpractice records in 15 states, excluding Colorado. But a push is on to add Colorado records as well...

Colorado-based HealthGrades is launching the first national physician malpractice database for the public. Until now, the public has had only limited access to physician malpractice judgment and settlement data, primarily through the individual state agencies that report the information.
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