• Melissa Rivers Slams Yorkville Clinic, 'Groupie' Docs with Suit Over Joan Rivers's Death

    Well, we knew this was inevitable, and now it has happened. Melissa Rivers has finally, officially filed a malpractice lawsuit against the Yorkville Endoscopy Clinic and everyone who played a part in her mother Joan Rivers's untimely death last September, according to Fox Business. In the suit, lawyers for Melissa claim that each staff member acted more like a groupie doctors than a bunch of caregivers, and when it was clear there was an emergency, Joan's personal doctor left the room in an attempt to distance herself from the mistakes that had been made.

  • Joan Rivers Surgeon Believed Anesthesiologists in Endoscopic Procedures Are Waste of Money

    Four months after Joan Rivers died after going into cardiac arrest during what should have been a simple endoscopic procedure, we are slowly but surely learning bits and pieces about the people who were in that procedure room with her. Dr. Lawrence Cohen was the surgeon on duty and also the medical director at the Yorkville Endoscopy Clinic where Rivers was a patient. In 2012, Cohen wrote an article bemoaning the cost of having an anesthesiologist on duty for simply endoscopic procedures. According to TMZ, which dug up the piece written by Cohen, the good doctor was seemingly more worried about cost-effectiveness than anything else. Cohen writes, "Although we can all agree that [monitored anesthesia care] is a highly effective and safe method of sedation, the question is whether it is worth the extra cost to our health care system." Cohen then answers his question: "The answer is clearly no." Cohen crunches the number in his article, saying the average cost for an anesthesiologist is $400 per procedure, but the risk of death is 1 out of 100,000. Cohen therefore concludes that it costs $40 million to save one life, adding that cost "far exceeds ... an acceptable level of cost-effectiveness."

  • Renuka Reddy Bankulla was the Anesthesiologist Involved in Joan Rivers Botched Procedure

    The series of events leading up to the unexpected and untimely death of Joan Rivers are quite complicated, mainly because the staff at Yorkville Endoscopy Center have worked really hard to keep things as under wraps as possible. We have gotten the distinct impression that Melissa Rivers' legal team has been slowly but surely piecing things together themselves because very few details have been willingly handed over. The media has been all over this from the beginning because it has always seemed like malpractice was involved. Today we've learned that the anesthesiologist in that procedure room with Joan was a woman named Renuka Reddy Bankulla.

  • Melissa Rivers's Holiday Wish Is for Her Son to Laugh Again

    These last four months have no doubt been at times unbearable for Melissa Rivers and her son Cooper. The untimely death of Joan Rivers in early September has been a devastating blow for the tight-knit family, and while Melissa is starting to step out in public again, that does not mean things are back to normal either for her or Cooper. TMZ caught up with the late comedienne's daughter last week and asked her about her holiday wish, and Melissa said her fondest Christmas wish would be for her son to begin laughing again. While she said she believes 2015 will have great things in store for them, it seems it may be awhile before they are feeling somewhat back to normal. Even if Melissa and Cooper have adjusted to not having Joan as a prominent part of their daily lives, there is still a legal battle ahead. It seems many mistakes were made by the staff of the Yorkville Endoscopy Clinic, from administering too much propofol to Joan to ignoring the fact that her vitals had dropped for an extended period of time, and Melissa has every intention of holding them accountable.

  • NY Health Dept. Believes Yorkville Clinic Broke Protocol Before Giving Joan Rivers Double Dose of Propofol

    It sounds like New York's Department of Health and Human Services has just made Melissa Rivers's malpractice suit a whole lot easier. As we recently told you, Melissa has hired a high-powered Manhattan law firm to represent her on behalf of Joan Rivers's estate. Page Six said Joan checked herself into the Yorkville Endoscopy Clinic Aug. 28 for what was intended to be an exploitative procedure and went into cardiac arrest while sedated with Propofol. According to the agency, the clinic screwed up by not dosing Joan properly. Propofol's dosage is dependent upon a patient's weight and, apparently, Yorkville never bothered to weigh Joan. According to an explosive report by TMZ, a staff member told the New York agency that they made a mistake while inputting the proper dosage into the computer and that Joan was given double the dosage of what is safe for a woman of her size. Not only did they screw up the medication, but the report also alleges that if Joan had been as closely monitored as a patient under Propofol is supposed to be, then staffers would have realized she was starting to die right in front of them! Instead, by the time the two doctors and team of nurses in the room realized what was happening, she was already in full cardiac arrest.

  • Joan Rivers Never Autopsied, Circumstances Surrounding Death May Never Be Known Making Malpractice Suit Shaky

    About 6 weeks after Joan Rivers' death we are now hearing that the true cause of the comedienne's passing may never be known. At the time of Rivers' unexpected medical crisis her daughter, Melissa Rivers was reportedly extremely upset and ultimately decided against having an autopsy done on her mother. In the state of New York if foul play is not suspected then the families' wish of no autopsy is honored. In this instance there was no autopsy performed and so pin pointing the exact cause of death may never be possible.
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