Medical center must pay $500,000 after radiologist, resident both miss hip fracture on X-ray
University of Iowa Health Care must pay $500,000 to a woman who now lives in India after missing her hip fracture on an X-ray five years ago.
The case dates to April 11, 2021, when 41-year-old Ruchi Sharma, living in Iowa City at the time, visited the UIHC emergency room following a head-on car collision. She had complained of hip and thigh pain after being admitted and was unable to raise her leg more than two inches off a bed, the Gazette reported Aug. 12.
Sharma underwent an X-ray of her left femur, hip and pelvis, according to the lawsuit, first filed in Johnson County District Court in 2024. A staff radiologist and resident both read the radiograph but found no evidence of a fracture or dislocation.
However, images would later reveal there was a break, as evidenced by a “lucent line,” a dark linear shadow typically signaling a fracture. Sharma met with a physical therapist the day after imaging but remained in extreme pain and later became bedridden.
She was reportedly discharged on April 13 but two days later called the hospital after experiencing a twitch in her thigh and unbearable pain.
“UIHC providers encouraged Ruchi to increase her physical activity and movement, including on her upcoming lengthy flight,” according to the lawsuit.
She returned home to India and while there went to a local hospital on May 4. There, she underwent a CT scan, demonstrating “minimally displaced fractures of anterior, posterior column and roof of left acetabulum” and “left side mild hip joint effusion,” according to the Gazette.
The same day, she received a letter from University of Iowa Health Care, admitting that its staffers misread the X-ray. Sharma remained admitted in India for the following month, requiring skeletal traction and complete bed rest. She now suffers from permanent osteoarthritis and is unable to lift anything, according to the lawsuit.
Sharma had been earning $625 a week teaching at the Maharishi International University before the accident. She now makes about $8,000 per year teaching remotely. UIHC has agreed to pay the half-million-dollar fee to settle the case, the Iowa deputy attorney general confirmed to the newspaper.
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Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.