Hospitals

Night Read (Minnesota): Mayo Clinic hard to sue in Olmsted County

The difficulties Olmsted County plaintiffs face in pursuing a medical malpractice claim against the Mayo Clinic, by far the area’s largest employer, were apparent in a recent appellate court decision in Becker et al. v. Mayo Foundation. The case involved an appeal from an Olmsted County jury’s finding that the clinic was not negligent in failing to report suspected abuse of an infant.

By Thomas Lee on February 09, 2010

Here are some news/notes from a day in MedCity, Minnesota:

How hard is it to win in court against the Mayo Clinic? The Rochester health care giant has lost only one jury trial in Olmsted County in the past two decades, according to Finance & Commerce in Minneapolis. Plaintiffs’ med-mal attorneys have long believed that the potential for juror bias when suing the medical giant on its home turf is a very real problem.

A decade-old medical technology startup called Disc Dynamics Inc.  has closed its doors and is selling off its assets, according to the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal. The Eden Prairie-based company was developing a treatment for lower back pain, but never got its product approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

MSP Commercial announced Tuesday that it is about to break ground on a 34,000-square-foot medical office building in Blaine, according to Finance & Commerce in Minneapolis. The building is already 87 percent leased by two health care enterprises – Minnesota Eye Consultants and the Noran Neurological Clinic.

Dr. Paul Friedman, a Mayo Clinic cardiologist, developed the iBlurb application for iPhone and iPod Touch, according to the Post-Bulletin in Rochester. The app lets users doctor up photos with cartoonish thought balloon messages, labels, date and time stamps and graffiti-style additions such as devil horns, halos or muscle-bound bodies.

A division of UnitedHealth Group Inc. in Minnetonka has launched Oncology Care Analysis, a new cancer care registry/database that combines clinical and claims data to gauge the quality of cancer patient care, according to the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal.