When Can Patients Sue a Hospital for Negligence?

When can you sue the hospital or its employees for negligence?

A hospital can be sued for negligence for mistakes that harm or kill a patient. When an employee of the hospital is guilty of negligence, you can sue the hospital. When a doctor working for a hospital makes a mistake, both the doctor personally and the hospital as a whole can be sued. However, doctors can only be sued if they were present and could have prevented the negligence. You cannot sue every doctor in the Emergency Room or surgical floor, only the one who administered or oversaw your treatment. Hospitals can also be sued when a doctor with a history of negligence and medical mistakes was kept on the payroll, thus enabling them to continue harming patients.

What constitutes neglect?

Neglect occurs when someone does not do their job as a normal and competent professional would. Negligence includes not verifying instructions, not following checklists, failing to assist patients in need and not take immediate action in an emergency. There are greater tolerances for mistakes made in life threatening emergencies than general care situations. Malpractice and negligence can arise from a failure to properly diagnose a condition or injury. Negligence can occur when someone is given the improper treatment or the correct treatment is administered incorrectly. Nurses administering the wrong medication and therapists following the wrong protocols are examples of this.

Failing to risk patients of negative outcomes from a medical treatment or side effects of the treatment is also negligence. Recommending a surgery to cure cataracts that can also leave a patient blind is an example of this concept. To sue for negligence, the risk must be significant enough that the patient might have chosen not to have the procedure or treatment if they had known and must have suffered that negative outcome.

Can you sue medical professionals other than doctors at the hospital?

Yes. Any medical professional affiliated with a hospital can be sued for negligence. This includes nurses, physical therapists, medical technicians and pharmacists. First responders such as paramedics and firefighters have broad protection from medical negligence claims, due to the difficulty of acting during emergencies, unless they are employees of the hospital and provide care at the facility. Good Samaritans are rarely sued for negligence unless their actions are reckless.

What types of damages are available when someone sues a hospital for negligence?

There must be a specific injury as well as actual damage to sue for negligence. You cannot sue a hospital because you were unhappy with the level of service.

Physical pain and suffering Medical bills with other medical facilities or practitioners to treat the condition caused by the hospital's neglect, injuries caused by the hospital or diagnose what the hospital failed to find. Lost income due to the inability to work or lost income of the individual who died Medical bills resulting from additional treatment at the hospital if the patient had received the proper course of treatment. Costs of physical therapy or assisted care while recovering Why the Fear of a Malpractice Lawsuit May Be Causing Malpractice   How The Compensation Claim Process Works   Have You Acquired Hepatitis?   

Medical Malpractice Happens When Foreign Bodies Are Left in a Patient After Surgery

You would think the surgeon operating on a patient would keep track of the sponges. They did not in this case.

This case is the one of the nightmarish ones. You go to a hospital for an operation and someone leaves a foreign body inside the operating site. If you are lucky, they catch it and it is removed. Not that it makes the mistake any easier to swallow when you have to have two operations instead of one and that your doctor messed up big time.

This wrongful death lawsuit was filed after the death of a man who went to hospital experiencing pain, and other symptoms, as a result of acute diverticulitis of the sigmoid portion of his colon. He needed surgery. The hospital was happy to oblige and he had his operation. He subsequently died a few days later, much to the bafflement of the surgeon and hospital staff that had transferred him to another area hospital to treat his declining medical condition. It turned out the surgeon had left a laparotomy pad inside the man. Despite emergency surgery upon finding the pad, intensive care and specialized treatment, the man died.

The lawsuit stated the hospital and the surgeon failed to keep track of their surgical instruments, laparotomy pads, sponges and other devices used in the initial surgery. A medical expert, retained by the plaintiff in this suit, indicated the care the deceased received did not meet the accepted standard expected at the hospital, and expected by other patients in similar circumstances. Clearly, if the surgeon leaves a foreign object behind in someone they operated on, this is a major mistake. That mistake caused this man's death due to abdominal sepsis. It doesn't get any more straightforward than that.

While there are rarely open and shut cases in wrongful death and/or medical malpractice lawsuits, this case comes close. It is obvious that but for the negligence of the surgeon, the man would still be alive today. If you feel you have been the victim of medical malpractice, and lived to tell about it, do not waste any time in contacting a Manchester personal injury lawyer about the case.

If you leave your doubts on the shelf too long, you may face losing the right to file a lawsuit, because you have missed the deadline for filing under the state statute of limitations. Medical malpractice/wrongful death lawsuits are no walk in the park, but some of them are clear enough on the evidence that they will not take as long as they could to settle or come to a resolution. Discuss your situation with a Manchester personal injury lawyer, and find out where you stand.

Why the Fear of a Malpractice Lawsuit May Be Causing Malpractice   How The Compensation Claim Process Works   Have You Acquired Hepatitis?   

The Future of Obamacare After Oral Arguments

When it comes to the future of Obamacare, now that a month has passed since the oral arguments were presented to the Supreme Court, we wait passively, lulled to sleep by the slow process of our judicial system (and this case is being pushed through quickly!) There's a false sense of security when it comes to Obamacare that this is an all or none proposition. Somehow, we have come to think if the SCOTUS decision is unconstitutionality on the individual mandate that the legislation just magically disappears. We tend to forget if the Supremes say "Not Constitutional" there's still the matter of severability, the idea that a portion of the bill can be struck down, while the remainder remains intact. Apparently, reporters at the hearing tweeted that "Kagan indicated if a choice between leaving half-a-loaf and no loaf, half-a-loaf wins." And the Wall Street Journal's Janet Adamy tweeted, " Ginsberg: If they must choose between wrecking operation and salvage job, salvage job is more conservative." The Associated Press reported that "Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Antonin Scalia were open to the idea that the wide-ranging law contains provisions that can be saved," even if the individual mandate requiring Americans purchase health insurance is struck down.

And then there's the small problem that every day that passes, there's more and more of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act being implemented, slowly and methodically, piece by piece. To simply expect each and every one of those changes to simply be reversed, or done away with, even if the Court said the entire bill is unconstitutional and must go. And, of course, there's the little matter of Congressional repeal required to actually strike down the current legislation, not a "gimmee" by any means.

Within the PPACA there are requirements for health insurance companies to cover everyone at reasonable costs, regardless of any pre-existing or debilitating medical conditions. This falls under the "guaranteed issue and community rating provisions" within the bill. In fact, only Sotomayor questioned the need to keep this provision, and so it's assumed that the Court has already decided if they strike down the individual mandate, they should also do away with the guaranteed issue and community rating provision, as they recognize that this provision is unsustainable, impractical, and will ultimately result in private insurance companies ultimately failing and declaring chapter eleven.

Can we accurately read between the lines? Has the High Court tipped their hand? Do we now get a sense of their voting conscience? Using plain old deductive reasoning, it does appear that the Justices are hinting to us that they may indeed declare the individual mandate unconstitutional. Certainly, if they don't it presents a whole host of new problems for them. What requirement will the government place upon the American people next? But, a vote against the constitutionality of the mandate is now beginning to suggest that the absence of the severability clause is likely going to be overlooked. From the justices initial reactions, it seems they have decided that they can strike down certain portions of the legislation, while leaving the bulk of the law intact.

Of course, if they go about exercising their apparent right to "line-item veto" individual parts of the law, they may end up backing the American people into a corner they aren't anxious to reside. If the individual mandate is struck down, and I do believe the Congress has overstepped its boundaries with this requirement, then how can the law effectively improve the issues we currently have with our health insurance system. If the "45 million" Americans who are uninsured simply choose not to purchase health insurance, as the individual mandate had been removed from the PPACA, then what good is anything else in the bill? And, didn't we initially begin this discussion of health reform back in the 1990's under the Clinton administration. If the main reason to even consider health reform for America in the first place was to assure that all Americans had insurance, and if the requirement to purchase or acquire health insurance is removed, what prevents those citizens within the uninsured pool who have made the conscious decision to not carry health insurance for whatever the reason form now sticking to their previous stance of not having any health insurance. And certainly, the remainder of the PPACA is not so overwhelmingly attractive that this subgroup of the uninsured will now suddenly be unable to live without the government's health plan.

And, basically, I'm only looking at one of the many tenets of Obamacare, and one can see how the "line-item veto" approach to judicial matters, is fraught with its own set of problems. Even though I am completely opposed to the PPACA, for it to have any chance of accomplishing anything positive at all, it must be passed in its entirety, or removed in its entirety. A cafeteria approach to "fixing" this legislation only causes even more chaos and complication. If you asked me, I'd suggest the only real solution is for Congress to repeal the entire PPACA, in spite of any oral arguments taken before the Supreme Court, and then we start over with a reasonable and realistic health reform plan, that maintains its roots in the private sector, as does the Ryan plan. But, I doubt that this is the course of action we'll take, as its way too logical and practical.

Why the Fear of a Malpractice Lawsuit May Be Causing Malpractice   How The Compensation Claim Process Works   Have You Acquired Hepatitis?