Report: Non-disclosure Agreements Burying Details of Medical Malpractice
A recent NBC News investigation uncovered how a public hospital system in Washington state is using a legal tool to keep families quiet about multi-million dollar malpractice settlements. Known as non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, the agreements prevent families from talking about errors that resulted in severe injury or death of loved ones.
According to the investigation, the University of Washington required NDAs for the majority of settlement agreements between 2015 and 2023. One such case involved a plaintiff who lost her husband to cancer in 2020. Eight years earlier, a University of Washington radiologist saw a lesion on the man’s lung scan and marked it as “critical,” yet no one shared this information with the man or his doctor. He was diagnosed with stage 4 terminal cancer in 2017 and died in 2020. The hospital settled the case for $5 million, while admitting no wrongdoing. The investigation pointed out that the use of an NDA prevents transparency and accountability for the general public.
If you are pursuing a medical malpractice lawsuit in Pennsylvania, it is important to have a an attorney who is powerful enough to dictate the terms of any settlement to the hospital, not the other way around. Tom Duffy has obtained recoveries and settlements from most of the large teaching hospitals and universities in the Philadelphia area, including a $45 million verdict just this year. Please contact us to see if he can help you, too.