what lawyer is for suing doctors

Should I Sue my doctor?

When we were home later that night, my daughter showed me a cut going down her arm exactly where the doctor removed the cast. I’m furious. Should I take legal action? DEAR PROTECTIVE PARENT: Did you take a picture of your daughter’s arm and immediately ...

How to sue your doctor?

• You should tell your lawyer about illnesses or injuries that you had prior to the doctor’s negligence.
• Also notify your lawyer if you have not followed the doctor’s instructions after treatment. Be honest. ...
• Your doctor’s treatment could still be negligent even if you didn’t comply with his instructions.

Who is the best medical malpractice attorney?

Top Rated Medical Malpractice Lawyers in Pittsburgh, PA

• Joshua P. Geist. Assisting people in Pittsburgh with their Pennsylvania medical malpractice issues.
• Benjamin W. Schweers. Experienced, assertive medical malpractice representation in the Pittsburgh, PA area.
• Bernard R. Rizza. ...
• Neil R. Rosen. ...
• Thomas B. Anderson. ...
• Jon R. Perry. ...
• Jason E. Luckasevic. ...
• William F. Goodrich. ...
• Peter D. Giglione. ...
• Brendan B. Lupetin. ...

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Why is Sue your doctor?

• a specific statute of limitations that applies to medical malpractice cases
• an experienced medical malpractice lawyer is typically crucial to a favorable outcome
• a qualified medical expert witness usually must vouch for the merits of your case, and

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What is it called when a doctor gets sued?

Medical malpractice occurs when a patient is harmed by a doctor (or other medical professional) who fails to competently perform his or her medical duties. State rules about medical malpractice vary from when you must bring your lawsuit to whether you must notify the doctor ahead of time.

What are the 3 types of malpractice?

There are three common types of medical malpractice lawsuits – failure to make the correct diagnosis, birth injuries and medication errors. In this blog, we discuss these medical errors in order to help you determine whether you have suffered an injury as a result of medical negligence.

What is the most common lawsuit in healthcare?

What Are the Most Common Medical Malpractice Claims?Misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis.Failure to treat.Prescription drug errors.Surgical or procedural errors.Childbirth injuries.

What is the most common cause of malpractice suits against physicians?

misdiagnosisOne of the most common reasons for filing a medical malpractice lawsuit is diagnostic errors such as misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis.

What can you claim for medical negligence?

There are many types of medical negligence that may warrant a claim, including;Misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis.Negligent cosmetic procedures.Mistakes during dental work.Care home negligence.Pressure sore claims.Incorrect surgery.Birth injuries.

What are the signs of malpractice?

Recognizing the Signs of Medical Malpractice: What You Should Look Out ForFailure to Diagnose. ... Misdiagnosis. ... You Received the Wrong Medication or Dosage. ... A Lack of Informed Consent. ... Your Doctor Admits to Making a Mistake. ... A Family Member Dies During or After a Medical Procedure. ... Know When to Contact an Attorney.

What kinds of mistakes can amount to medical malpractice?

The most frequent medical mistakes that lead to malpractice cases are delayed diagnosis or misdiagnosis, childbirth injuries, medication errors, surgery errors, and anesthesia errors. These types of errors happen over and over in healthcare facilities all over the country. Often, they are preventable.

What kind of mistakes can result in medical malpractice?

Misreading or ignoring laboratory results, Premature discharge from a hospital, Prescribing improper medication or dosage, or. Failing to account for a patient's health history.

What is Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice is a widespread issue that can happen to any patient when they least expect it, causing someone who may have never been involved in the legal system before to need to sue a doctor.

Hiring a Lawyer To Sue a Doctor

Medical malpractice laws recognize that injured patients have the right to seek financial compensation, but the process is very confusing and requires an experienced personal injury lawyer to navigate.

Philadelphia Medical Malpractice Attorneys

Healthcare professionals have an obligation to their patients to act in accordance with the oath they swore to “ Do No Harm .” No patient seeking care should ever have to endure additional pain and suffering caused by those they trusted to heal them.

What is medical malpractice?

Medical malpractice cases typically revolve around surgical errors, medication mistakes, misdiagnoses, or birth injuries. When looking for a lawyer to sue a doctor for any of these situations, it’s essential to find an attorney with experience specific to your circumstances.

What is the first step after reaching out to a lawyer?

Once you find a firm to contact, the first step after reaching out to them is typically a screening process that determines if your case is likely to be successful. This screening process helps save precious time on both the victim and attorney’s ends, ensuring that there is a good mutual fit before proceeding.

Do medical malpractice attorneys work on a contingency basis?

This means that, as a plaintiff, you agree to pay a portion of any financial compensation you recover to the law firm once your case is settled or a verdict is handed down.

What can a malpractice lawyer do for you?

Our malpractice lawyers can help you get compensated for various medical costs that might arise from treating your injury . These expenses may include prescription drugs, doctor visits, hospital stays, physical therapy, and more.

What happens if a doctor is negligent in the emergency room?

They are also trained to maintain a high standard of care whatsoever. Thus, if a doctor is negligent in the emergency room, they can cause serious, debilitating injuries.

What Is Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice transpires when a healthcare specialist administers a treatment that diverges from established standards of care within the medical association. As a result, this act causes harm to a patient.

What happens if you stop working to recover from an injury?

If you’re required to stop work to recuperate from your injury, you can receive compensation for the lost wages. You can also receive compensation for your diminished earning capacity.

Can you sue a doctor in Florida?

If you’re in Florida and nursing an injury because of a doctor’s negligence, you’re permitted to sue the hospital, doctor, and other medical specialists involved in the practice. However, you have to prove that you’re entitled to compensation. You also have a limited amount of time to file a medical malpractice lawsuit. So, here are a few things you need to know on how to sue a doctor in Florida.

Can a medical malpractice victim receive compensation?

A medical malpractice victim can receive compensation for any physical pain and emotional distress endured. This will cater to all future medical bills.

How can a lawyer help you with malpractice?

Causation and proving malpractice can be very complicated, and a lawyer can help you to gather the right evidence and to find the necessary expert witnesses so that you are able to be fairly compensated for any harm that occurred as a result of a professional not being careful when managing your health .

What are the damages for medical malpractice?

The last thing that a patient has to prove in order to be able to recover compensation for medical malpractice is that the harm caused by the practitioner's negligence actually caused some kind of damages. Damages include the following: 1 Medical bills and costs associated with treating the injury that resulted from the negligence or that was exacerbated or made worse as a result of the negligence. This portion of damages covers not just past medical bills but any costs of future expected care as well. 2 Lost wages. This should include all losses, even if the plaintiff was able to take vacations or sick days. It should also include any future losses that will result if the plaintiff expects to miss more work or to be less able to earn income than in the past as a result of the injuries. 3 Pain and suffering 4 Emotional distress 5 Wrongful death if the patient was killed by the medical negligence. 6 Punitive damages if permitted by the state and if the doctor's behavior was negligent enough to be deserving of such damages.

What does negligence mean in a lawsuit?

Essentially, the plaintiff has to show that the negligence was the but for, or proximate and direct cause of some kind of damage and injury. This gets tricky because doctors or hospitals may argue that the injury would have happened and would have been the same even if the negligence had never occurred.

What happens if a doctor doesn't do CPR?

If a doctor, nurse or health care professional provides you with care but doesn't do it right, then he/she can be held responsible. This can range from leaving an instrument inside you during surgery to not performing CPR with a reasonable degree of skill to amputating the wrong foot to any other type of medical procedure performed with a lack of reasonable skill.

What is a breach of duty in healthcare?

The duty was breached. The breach of duty was the direct cause of some kind of harm, without which the harm would not have occurred. The harm directly caused an injury for which the patient may be compensated.

What happens if a doctor fails to diagnose a condition?

If a doctor fails to diagnose a condition that he/she reasonably should have diagnosed given the symptoms you reported and/or the results of the tests performed, then the doctor can be held liable for any problems arising from the misdiagnosis or delayed treatment.

Can a medical malpractice claim be held liable?

Those who suffer from a medical malpractice injury may be able to hold the medical care provider (s) responsible for that injury liable under the special rules that apply for this type of professional negligence.

Why is finding a lawyer important in a medical malpractice case?

First, medical malpractice cases are a challenge to win, since they tend to involve complex legal and medical issues.

Who to talk to about medical malpractice?

For information that's tailored to your potential medical malpractice case, and details on what's required to file this kind of lawsuit in your state, talk to a medical malpractice lawyer.

How long do you have to file a medical malpractice lawsuit?

All states have specific deadlines for filing a medical malpractice lawsuit, set by laws called statutes of limitations. These laws can be very complex, since in most states the deadline can vary depending on the circumstances of a particular case. So the text of a typical statute of limitations for medical malpractice lawsuits might include: 1 the standard filing deadline (i.e. one year, two years) 2 the " discovery rule " exception for situations in which the patient did not know (or could not reasonably have learned) that a health care provider's medical negligence played a role in their harm 3 an overarching time limit for filing the lawsuit (called a "statute of repose"), which applies regardless of any "discovery rule" extension, and 4 the deadline for minors, incapacitated individuals, and others.

What is the statute of limitations for medical malpractice?

All states have specific deadlines for filing a medical malpractice lawsuit, set by laws called statutes of limitations. These laws can be very complex, since in most states the deadline can vary depending on the circumstances of a particular case. So the text of a typical statute of limitations for medical malpractice lawsuits might include:

Why are medical malpractice cases so expensive?

Fourth, medical malpractice cases are expensive (in part because of the cost of these medical experts). Good medical malpractice lawyers accept this and are prepared to pay these costs, which could reach tens of thousands of dollars. Inexperienced medical malpractice lawyers may not want to front these costs and/or may not be able to afford the costs, and you can lose your case if you're unable to pay the necessary experts.

What is the pre-lawsuit filing rule?

3. The "Certificate of Merit" and Other Pre-Lawsuit Filing Rules. In many states, the plaintiff's lawyer must submit what is called an "offer of proof" or a "cer tificate of merit" when (or soon after) filing the lawsuit, and before any pretrial investigation occurs.

What is a sworn opinion in a medical malpractice case?

Depending on the state's laws, this filing can require a qualified physician to review the plaintiff's medical records and write a sworn opinion decla ring that the defendant physician was negligent in providing care to the plaintiff, and that the physician's negligence caused the plaintiff's subsequent injuries.

How long can you sue a doctor for medical malpractice?

Every state in the United States limits how much time you can take to sue a doctor for medical malpractice. The rule limiting your time is called a statute of limitations. The statute of limitations generally demands that you bring your claim within a certain number of years after learning that you were injured by your doctor. In Colorado and Wyoming, for example, that time is two years. The statute of limitations is an unforgiving thing. Exceptions to meeting them are very, very rare. So if you think you have a claim against your doctor for medical malpractice, do not waste time.

How to identify a doctor's negligence?

Sometimes, it is possible to simply look at a doctor’s conduct and know that the doctor’s act was something that a “reasonable” doctor would not have done. Things like performing surgery on the wrong side, or taking away a medication that you needed are often times things that make negligence on a doctor’s part easy to identify. But the practice of medicine is a complex thing. And more often than not identifying a doctor’s negligence requires another doctor to comb through records and make a determination that the doctor did something or failed to do something that a reasonable doctor should or should not have done.

Can you file a medical malpractice claim if your doctor did not act properly?

Just determining that your doctor failed to act reasonably isn’t the end of the inquiry into whether you can bring a claim for malpractice or not. Once you’ve determined that your doctor acted unreasonably, you then have to ask if your doctor’s action caused you harm, and more likely, significant harm. In other words, if your doctor gave you the wrong medication, but someone caught the mistake the next day before you had a chance to take the wrong medication, your doctor’s actions, although wrong, didn’t cause you harm, and you won’t have a claim for medical malpractice. On the other hand, if your doctor did surgery on your left leg instead of your right where he was supposed to, and you lose your leg as a result, you’ve suffered an injury that would allow you to bring a medical malpractice claim.

How Do You Know Who Is Liable?

To determine whether the hospital or the doctor alone should be responsible for the medical malpractice, many factors need to be considered. There are some situations where a lawyer will need to review your case to determine whether you should file a medical malpractice claim with the hospital, doctor, or both. Such situations include:

Retention and Hiring Policy of the Hospital

If the hospital failed to check the doctor’s background according to proper conduct before allowing them to treat patients in the hospital, the fault could lie with both the hospital and the doctor.

Non-Employee Liability

In some cases, the hospital will be at fault even if the doctor is an independent contractor. Such cases include:

ER Treatment

In some emergency rooms, you are not given the opportunity to sign an admission form informing you of the doctor’s employment status. As such, this would be the fault of the hospital.

Negligent Retention

If a serving physician has a bad record that the hospital knew about, but they allowed the doctor to treat patients anyway, the blame would lie with the hospital for allowing such risks.

Seek Legal Counsel

If you aren’t sure who is responsible for your medical malpractice, a qualified attorney can help you figure it out. That’s where the trusted names at the Doctor Lawyer Firm come in.

Legal and Medical Experience You Can Trust

Matthew Sowell is one of the few Florida lawyers certified by the Florida Bar and the American Board of Professional Liability. He is also the founding chairman of the Stroke Litigation Group.