A recent investigative report in the Chicago Tribune revealed that the Illinois Department of Health ignores a shockingly high number of catastrophic events in hospitals. In 2010, patients or their families made 560 complaints to the DOH. The DOH refused to investigate 85 percent of them, even in cases where patients alleged that they were abused.

The Tribune expose shows that it’s not just patient complaints that are ignored by the state, but those raised by concerned staff members such as nurses. Despite whistleblowers using all the right channels, these complaints are often waived off by hospital administrators, and they’re usually completely ignored by state investigators.

Bureaucrats retort that the regulatory agency doesn’t have the funds to investigate every complaint, but a failure to investigate nearly 9 out of 10 complaints is truly without excuse.

The government’s massive, systemic failure only reinforces the need for private citizens to have access to Illinois courts when they are victims of things like being put in a chokehold by a nurse, being forced to sit in a pile of their own feces for hours on end, or being given a lethal dose of a narcotic.

With such a void left by the state, it is solely up to the victims of medical negligence and their families to use the courts to address their grievances, and to put pressure on hospitals not to repeat these mistakes.