Medical Reform, a nursing home advocacy group founded earlier this year by Sun City Summerlin resident Sylvia Barcus, is getting a boost in its efforts by joining up with NECAPP, another more sizeable and influential group that's looking to make meaningful changes in the local medical industry.
Galina Kubrak, who's on a personal crusade for her son, formed Nevada Executives and Citizens Advocating Patient Protection, NECAPP, last year and now has a list of approximately 200 members.
The NECAPP group, which gets together and discusses common complaints within the medical community, has started a petition drive that asks Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury to "defend patient's rights, fix problems with (the) funding and administration" at the county-run University Medical Center.
Specifically, the petition, in an attempt to overturn state law, asks Woodbury in his influential capacity "to restore the cap exceptions for gross negligence and where exceptional circumstances justify an award in excess of the cap (as determined by the court), and to end structuring of lawyers' fees in malpractice cases."
The cap exceptions to medical malpractice claims seeking noneconomic damages were eliminated when Question 3 -- the Keep Our Doctors in Nevada, or KODIN, initiative -- on the November 2004 ballot gained the approval of nearly 60 percent of voters.
Before the measure passed, lawsuits exceeding $350,000 in the two specific areas were allowed. But now, the law states all claims are limited to $350,000.
Accompanying the Woodbury petition was a flier asking, "Has this happened to you or a loved one at UMC Hospital ... Does this sound familiar? Then we want your help!" -- with a telephone number, which Barcus saw.
"I called the ad and talked to them," said Barcus, who attended a July 16 NECAPP meeting in Kubrak's Spanish Trail home.
"We met at a luncheon (July 9) and agreed to get together," Barcus said. "Our next meeting will be in Sun City, at the Desert Vista Clubhouse, on Sept. 16 at 11 a.m. We want everyone to come and discuss the problems they've had, whether it's with nursing homes, hospitals, doctors, nurses or anyone else that has given them poor medical service."
Kubrak said she is very unhappy with the emergency room service she and her son Michael received at UMC.
The 22-year-old Moscow, Russia-born man who now must use a walker to get around is bitter, too, about the medical treatment he received at University Medical Center following a Jan. 1, 2004, car rollover accident that badly damaged his spinal cord.
"I woke up (in UMC) three days later after being sedated without my permission and didn't know anything," said Kubrak, who is paralyzed from the waist down. "The doctors wouldn't tell me anything. It was like gang politics because everybody was protecting everybody else and nobody would speak up about anybody else. I found out later that I could have died if I didn't go to Israel for treatment."
Kubrak left UMC shortly after his admission and went to a hospital in Colorado that specializes in spinal cord injuries for observation and treatment before leaving in March 2004 for surgery on his spine in a Tel Aviv hospital.
Also attending the NECAPP meeting was Dr. Leonard Kreisler, a former UMC chief of staff and medical director on the Yucca Mountain Project, who has since retired and has authored books on medical reform.
He warned group members about not going after the medical profession half-cocked, but fully knowledgeable about their concerns.
"You don't go after them with a gun, but rather meet with them privately and tell them this is what and where you plan to go," he said. "You don't make allegations. You've got to research things. You go out there and cry wolf all the time you're not going to get anywhere. You've got to get all the facts, indisputable facts, and then go after them."
Facts aside and living through the reality of a medical experience that went bad, Michael, like his mother, said he feels the medical industry is filled with negligence.
Barcus agreed and extended her concerns to the nurshing home care industry.
Barcus and Kubrak said they realize, though, as do their members, that change will not come easily or quickly.
"We just have to open (the dialogue) up and (change) will start to develop," Galina said. "It's like a baby. Some steps you take will be right and some steps will be wrong. I believe together, though, we can make a difference."
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