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Weiss v. Goldfarb11/20/1996
The opinion of the court was delivered by PRESSLER, P.J.A.D.
This is a medical malpractice case. Plaintiff's decedent, Robert A. Wood, died following a cardiac arrest while undergoing dialysis at St. Michael's Medical Center. He had come to the dialysis unit from the hospital's telemetry unit where, because of a variety of arrythmia problems, his heart had been continuously monitored since his arrival at the hospital two days earlier. He was not connected to a monitor in the dialysis unit. The gravamen of the plaintiff's case is that the hospital and the physicians and nurses responsible for decedent's care were negligent in permitting the dialysis to take place without decedent's heart being monitored and that had it been monitored, the cardiac arrest would have been observed and counteracted and his life would have been spared. The jury found the hospital alone to have been negligent, returning a verdict against it of $150,000, of which only $10,000 was collectible by reason of the limitation of N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-8. Plaintiff appeals from both Judge and jury findings of non-liability in respect of the other defendants and from the Judge's refusal, based on the authority of Johnson v. Mountainside Hospital, 239 N.J. Super. 312, 571 A.2d 318 (App. Div.), certif. denied, 122 N.J. 188 (1990), to apprise the jury of the statutory damages limitation in favor of the hospital. We affirm in part and reverse in part. Decedent, then 67 years old and suffering from long-term hypertension and various coronary and renal problems, was admitted to St. Joseph's Hospital in June 1989 complaining of chest pain. He was there diagnosed as suffering from non-sustained ventricular tachycardia and atrial fibrillation, as well as from chronic kidney failure. An angiogram revealed some blockage of a coronary artery. He was placed on a heart monitor and also began to receive dialysis treatments on a three-day a week schedule, remaining on the monitor during the treatments. His cardiologist, Dr. Cohen, concerned that the arrhythmia problems might be life-threatening in that they posed a risk of fatal ventricular fibrillation, wanted defendant to submit to electro-physiological diagnosis as the basis for a treatment plan. Since St. Joseph's did not have an electro-physiology service, Dr. Cohen referred decedent to the telemetry unit at St. Michael's and to the care there of Dr. Irwin Goldfarb as attending cardiologist and Dr. Donald Rubenstein, a specialist in arrhythmia problems and director of St. Michael's electro-physiology unit.
Decedent arrived at St. Michael's on Thursday, July 13, 1989, two weeks after his admission to St. Joseph's. He was immediately placed in the telemetry unit under the care of Drs. Goldfarb and Rubenstein. Being placed in the telemetry unit meant that the patient was connected automatically to a cardiac monitor under continuous observation. Dr. Rubenstein performed a series of electro-physiological tests on Friday, July 14. He concluded that the major arrythmia problem, the ventricular tachycardia, was "benign" in that it could not be electrically induced. In an attempt to control the arrythmia with medication, he prescribed two drugs, Tenormin and Quiniglute. Late Friday afternoon, Dr. Goldfarb, with whom Dr. Rubenstein had been conferring, left for the weekend and turned decedent's general cardiac management over to Dr. Adolph Senft, the cardiologist who was covering for him. In the meantime, decedent had missed his Friday dialysis treatment, and after inquiry from his family, Dr. Goldfarb, on that Friday evening, telephoned Dr. W.R. Chenitz, chairman of St. Michael's nephrology department, to arrange to have decedent dialyzed the next day, Saturday. As Dr. Chenitz was also planning to be away
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