Finally a settlement in a Legionella case

The USA federal government made a settlement amounting to 227,400 US dollars in the long running Pittsburgh VA hospitals case. From 22 cases diagnosed from February 2011 to November 2012, 6 people eventually died from Legionnaires disease. Several cases have been settled out of court. The settlement was considered low by injured parties. Despite calls of negligence no VA parties have been held individually accountable, though several advisers have resigned their positions.

The settlement casts doubt upon the widespread practice of relying on culture testing as a monitoring regime. Culture testing takes 10-14 days to return a result when rapid testing returns a result in minutes allowing immediate corrective action to be taken, possibly saving lives and reducing legal and financial responsibility.