Lawsuit over doctor’s death could add up to millions

Among my saddest phone callers are elderly men whose wives died and they can't find an attorney to take their medical malpractice cases. The fact is, elderly unemployed women don't have the earning power that creates substantial economic damages for a wrongful death lawsuit.

Even if there was medical malpractice, it's not worth it for an attorney to take the case.

That's not so with the death of Dr. Manish Jain on April 23, 2010. He was a 35-year-old neurosurgeon about to join a local practice where doctors earn an average of $2 million a year. If he worked until he was 65, he could be expected to earn $60 million over his career.

"This is, without a doubt, the largest medical malpractice case in Nevada in terms of economic loss to the heirs," said the Jain family's Las Vegas attorney, Gary Logan, who represents Jain's wife, Donna, and their three young children.

On Monday, Logan sued Summerlin Hospital Medical Center, emergency room doctor Joseph Bajo, and intensive care internist Elliot Wade. Hospital officials and the two doctors refused to comment. The lawsuit also targets Nevada EM-i Silver-homansky Medical Services, Bajo's employer.

The Jain name may sound familiar. Both his parents are local doctors, Ranjit and Renu Jain. He is a urologist, she a pediatrician. Their neurosurgeon son was contracted to join Western Regional Center for Brain and Spine Surgery.

One would assume a doctor might get the best medical care when he went at 8 a.m. to Summerlin Hospital's emergency room. Jain had been vomiting and had diarrhea for three days, plus a fever and was unable to urinate that day when he sought help.

By 11 that night, he was dead.

The likely cause of death: sepsis, a life-threatening infection that can cause septic shock and death.

The lawsuit alleged the late Dr. Jain was not treated properly by the emergency room doctor and his transfer to intensive care and subsequent treatment was delayed nearly three hours, delaying treatment by the internist.

Two medical experts, Dr. H. Bryant Nguyen from Loma Linda University Medical Center, an expert in sepsis and emergency medicine, and Dr. Ron Walls of Boston, former director of the division of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School, said Jain's treatment fell below the appropriate standard of care.

Bajo, a D.O. licensed in Nevada since 1995, did not treat Jain like a critically ill patient and failed to provide the proper treatments with the necessary urgency, according to Nguyen and Walls.

Both experts said records showed that between 11 a.m., when the ER doctor ordered Jain transferred to intensive care, and about 2:30 p.m., when Jain was actually transferred to ICU, Jain wasn't properly monitored by Bajo or nurses.

There are discrepancies in the records about when Wade, an M.D. licensed in Nevada in 2008, was contacted about Jain. Was it 10:30 a.m. or 12:15 p.m.?

But Wade didn't see Jain until about 1:10 p.m., when Jain was still in the ER. Then Wade didn't see his patient again until 6:30 p.m. That, too, was substandard care for a critically ill patient, according to Nguyen.

ER nurses also were negligent for not telling Bajo that his 11 a.m. order to transfer Jain to intensive care wasn't being done, Nguyen said. He blamed ICU nurses for not promptly telling Wade tests showed Jain needed a respiratory therapist.

Nguyen believed Jain would have survived with proper and timely treatment .

These are allegations and opinions connected to a lawsuit, and the doctors and the hospital will have a chance to present a defense later.

But, if true, what kind of treatment can the rest of us hope for if this can happen to Dr. Jain?

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison.