A tragic outcome, and this physician wonders about whether an inevitable patient death equates to a large windfall:

Several years have passed since this case was closed, and I still have trouble sorting out how I feel about it. I’m still surprised by my reaction to the huge settlement given to Mrs. Rios’ family. Undoubtedly they suffered a horrible tragedy. But I still don’t understand how that equates with their multimillion dollar windfall.

What’s even more disturbing, is the message that huge award sends to the family. I fear it tells them that if only they’d taken Mrs. Rios to another hospital her life would have been saved. I think that by allowing them to assign blame for her loss to our hospital and the two OBs, we have frozen them in a state of anger instead of allowing them to realize that this tragedy was an unfortunate, but most likely inevitable outcome.