Criticisms of a teleradiologist’s short time spent reading CT images helped plaintiff attorneys produce a $15.5 million malpractice verdict.
An article about the verdict in Radiology Business showed that the teleradiologist read two of the CTs in about five minutes. Medical literature presented during the trial showed that it takes the average radiologist in New Zealand, where the study was conducted, longer than 15 minutes to read both scans.
The case dates to May 21, 2018, when a 74-year-old man fell down the stairs at his daughter’s Georgia home. After a 911 call, he was transported to a local Medical Center emergency room, where an emergency physician ordered CT exams of the head, spine, chest and abdomen/pelvis.
American board-certified radiologist Thomas J. Bryce, MD—with Coral Springs, Florida-based NightHawk Radiology at the time—performed the late-night preliminary read from Thailand. He purportedly labeled the spine scan as “completely normal for a 74-year-old.” The emergency physician subsequently removed the patient’s neck brace leading to his eventual quadriplegia. The man remained without the use of his four limbs for the last two and a half years of his life before dying in January 2021.
Previous case law in Georgia required that a radiologist or other physician must be physically present in the ER for gross negligence to apply. However, a July 2024 appellate court ruling related to the Georgia ER statute found that “it did not matter where a person is located when they provide emergency medical care to a patient located in the emergency department.”
The lawsuit mirrors allegations that surfaced in a 2020 suit, in which attorneys accused a radiologist of lax CT reading for spending only seconds looking at medical images.
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