On 2/10/05, Mr. George Nissen was a 44-year-old police officer who was involved in an altercation. He was thrown over a car and landed on his head. After he went home, he developed weakness on the left side of his body, had difficulty standing and walking, and was admitted to the University of Illinois Medical Center. On 2/12/05, he underwent surgery to remove a collection of blood. During this admission, he suffered a rise in intracranial pressure that resulted in severe brain damage. Mr. Nissen’s family filed a medical malpractice suit against the facility.

Mr. Nissen’s attorney, Margaret Battersby of Levin and Perconti in Chicago, asked for Med League’s help in summarizing the voluminous medical records. The challenge: to take 11 three inch binders of medical records spanning 5 years, and create summaries of the most important aspects of Mr. Nissen’s condition.

First, we organized the medical records into tabbed sections for each of his hospital and rehabilitation stay admissions. Each admission was broken down into the type of record, such as physician order, nursing notes, and so on.

We created month-by month tables showing all of Mr. Nissen’s symptoms, as signs of discomfort and complications. We showed his ability, month by month, to respond to his environment, by nodding his head “yes” or “no”, lifting his thumb up for “yes” or responding to his name. Using Casemap, we created a chronology of events and coded each entry into a category. This permitted us to extract all of the entries related to particular aspects of Mr. Nissen’s condition. The end products were chronologies that summarized his communication abilities, comprehension, discomfort, fatigue, functional abilities, hospital admissions, mood, pain, respiratory condition, and seizures. Lastly, we identified and copied over 350 key documents that illustrated key points about his condition, and created a list of all exhibits.

The attorney found our work product essential in understanding and organizing what happened to Mr. Nissen. She was able to settle this claim and enable Mr. Nissen to receive care for the rest of his life.