Injured By A Medical Error?
Let our DC and Boston Injury Attorneys Help
In December 2009, a Suffolk County jury found two doctors at a Boston hospital, one of them an anesthesiologist and former physician-in-chief at the hospital, caused the death of a 3-year-old Pennsylvania boy. The boy died in December 2004, after undergoing a procedure at the hospital for a complex but treatable birth defect. The boy went to the hospital playful and active, but came out flying by air ambulance to a neurological rehabilitation facility, undergoing 8 unsuccessful procedures and then dying. After the trial, the father of the child told reporters the only protection people had when they went against powerful Harvard, top-ranked physicians was the jury system. Medical malpractice is professional negligence by a health care provider who deviates from the reasonable standard of care in the medical community and causes injury or death to the patient. A plaintiff must establish four elements of negligence for a successful medical malpractice claim:
- The defendant owed a duty to the plaintiff
- The defendant breached the duty
- The breach caused the plaintiff injury
- Damages resulted from the injury
A legal duty exists when a hospital or health care provider agrees to care or treat a patient. The provider breaches a duty when it fails to conform to the standard of care in the jurisdiction evidenced by expert testimony. To qualify as an expert in a medical malpractice case, a person must have sufficient knowledge, education, training, or experience in the specific field before the court to give a reliable opinion. Each Boston injury lawyer or Washington DC injury attorney at Pollack & Flanders LLP has a long history of successfully fighting for victims’ compensation in medical malpractice cases. The breach of a legal duty causes an injury when an injury would not have occurred but for the breach. Damages result from an injury when a patient suffers monetary or emotional losses such as death from a failure to diagnose cancer. Common categories of medical malpractice include:
- Failure to diagnose
- Mistakes during surgery
- Birth injuries
- Prescribing incorrect medication
- Surgical errors
- Hospital negligence
- Cancer misdiagnosis
For example, a child swallows foreign metal material, and the attending physician fails to diagnose the trouble, resulting in the child’s death. Another example, a physician improperly monitors a newborn baby with a metabolic disorder, leaving the child permanently brain damaged. Often, overwhelming medical expenses prevent people from obtaining proper diagnoses and treatments. Each Boston injury lawyer or Washington DC attorney at Pollack & Flanders LLP has a long history of successfully fighting for victims’ compensation in medical malpractice cases. In medical malpractice, types of damages the injured person may recover include:
- Medical care
- Loss of earnings
- Pain and suffering
- Emotional distress
- Psychological counseling
For instance, incorrect medication may result from a patient undergoing unnecessary surgery that leads to severe pain for which a doctor prescribes addictive medication, turning the patient into a drug addict. Another example, surgical error may occur when a patient undergoes an unnecessary heart catheterization and develops a blood clot in an improperly evaluated leg, leaving a patient permanently disabled. Licensing boards require medical providers to maintain professional liability insurance to offset the risk and costs of medical malpractice lawsuits. Because providers have the advantage of free defenses from insurance policies, medical malpractice cases usually do not settle until an injured party files a lawsuit and after discovery. The staff at Pollack & Flanders LLP understands insurance coverage issues and maintains respect with insurance adjusters in order to analyze the financial plunge necessary to prosecute a case. Contact a Boston injury lawyer or a Washington DC attorney at Pollack & Flanders for an evaluation of the merits of your medical malpractice case.
