• 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."
  • Melissa Rivers Hires Powerhouse Law Firm to File Multimillion-Dollar Wrongful Death Suit on Behalf of Joan Rivers Estate

    All of that speculation about Melissa Rivers filing a wrongful death lawsuit has now become reality, as it was announced that Joan Rivers's daughter has retained the Manhattan powerhouse law firm of Gair, Gair, Conason, Steigman, Maloof, Bloom and Rubinowitz. This comes as simply the first step in filing a multimillion-dollar wrongful death suit against the Yorkville Clinic, where Joan's routine endoscopic procedure resulted in a coma the comedienne never came out of. It is possible a formal suit could be filed as early as today in New York City.
  • 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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