When the hospital's trauma team could not get an IV inserted into an accident victim, they called Illinois emergency physician William Sullivan, DO, JD, for help. Sullivan, who is based in the Chicago suburb of Frankfort, inserted a central line into the patient's leg on his first attempt — a task that took about 20 minutes.
A year later, Sullivan was shocked and angry to learn he was being sued by the trauma patient's family. Inserting the line was his only interaction with the woman, and he had no role in her care management, he said. Yet, the suit claimed he was negligent for failing to diagnose the patient with internal bleeding and for not performing surgery.
"The lawsuit put a lot of stress on our family," Sullivan recalled. "At the time my wife was pregnant. I was in law school, and I was also working full time in the ER to support our family. I remember my wife crying on the couch after reading the complaint and asking how the plaintiff's attorney could get away with making the allegations he made."
Sullivan soon learned that 15 medical providers in the patient's medical record were named as defendants. This included the director of the radiology department, whose name was on a radiology report as "director" but who was actually out of the country when the incident occurred.
