Medical malpractice or negligence can have devastating results for the affected patient. It’s estimated that anywhere from 250,000 to 440,000 people die from medical malpractice every year in the US.
Exact numbers are hard to determine since death certificates don’t note the role of malpractice in a person’s death, but survivors also suffer injuries, some with permanent consequences, as a result of negligent care.
An additional problem is that it’s sometimes hard to know if you’ve been injured by medical malpractice. In most cases, your healthcare provider isn’t going to tell you they messed up.
It is possible to suffer complications or have a bad outcome even if your healthcare team didn’t make any mistakes, so some patients may assume they were just unlucky. For this reason, many people aren’t even aware that the damage they suffered was avoidable, and they may miss the limited window of opportunity to file a compensation claim (Tennessee has a one-year statute of limitations for medical malpractice claims, starting when the malpractice occurred or when it was discovered or should have been discovered).
If you have concerns that your difficulties may have been due to medical negligence, a wise step is to speak with a medical malpractice attorney right away to learn more.
Do I Need a Tennessee Medical Malpractice Attorney?
If you’ve got questions about medical malpractice, Ali Awad, the founder and managing attorney at The CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm, will help you get answers. Also known as “The CEO Lawyer,” Mr. Awad has turned a small law firm into an 8-figure firm in just three years.
Not surprisingly, his firm was voted the fastest-growing law firm in the United States, beating out 499 others in 2021. The CEO Lawyer also speaks to more than a million followers on social media who look to him for timely legal advice.
If you or a loved one have been injured in a medical setting, don’t wait – call Ali Awad for a no-obligation, free consultation of your case. The CEO lawyer and his team work on a contingency basis, and that means they don’t get paid unless and until you do.
You have nothing to lose by calling (423) 777-8888 to learn all of the options for your case. For now, let’s look at some common questions about medical malpractice:
Who Can Commit Medical Negligence?
Any healthcare provider can be negligent in their care – doctors, nurses, physician’s assistants, pharmacists, and technicians. In some cases, it may take a little while to sort out where the negligence occurred.
For example, what if you were in the hospital and were given the wrong medication or the wrong dosage? It could be that the physician accidentally prescribed the wrong drug or dose, or that the pharmacist who filled the order made a mistake, or the nurse or technician delivering the dose did.
In more complex cases, we sometimes find that more than one person made a serious error in a patient’s care.
Do I Have to Sue My Healthcare Provider? They Were Very Nice, and I Don’t Think They Meant to Cause Me Any Harm.
We hear this a lot. Once we identify the worker or workers who made errors in your care, you probably won’t have to sue them directly.
This is because hospitals and other healthcare facilities carry malpractice insurance, as do many doctors. So, we generally start by filing a claim with the insurance provider.
They pay the claim, and the doctor or other healthcare worker goes about their business. The healthcare provider usually has little to do with the claim other than making a statement about what happened.
What if My Doctor Was Horrible, and I Don’t Think They Should Be Practicing Medicine Anymore?
On the other side of the coin, we sometimes meet people who had a very bad experience with a negligent healthcare provider and believe that person should not be working in healthcare. A lawsuit is intended to compensate you for the damages you sustained – pain and suffering, permanent disability or other health issues, missed time at work, additional medical bills or other costs, etc.
However, it will probably not stop your healthcare provider from continuing to practice (unless they’ve had multiple claims and their insurance premiums are now prohibitively high). You can, however, file a complaint with the state medical board or the healthcare worker’s employer if you feel the provider’s behavior was unprofessional or unethical.
What Is Needed To Prove Medical Malpractice?
Poor outcomes can happen for reasons unrelated to a doctor’s actions. For this reason, when pursuing a medical malpractice claim, it’s necessary to prove that the doctor failed to provide a reasonable “standard of care.”
Standard of care can be thought of as a benchmark or a level of care that a typical doctor would find appropriate for the situation. For example, it may be a reasonable standard of care to run certain tests when a patient reports a specific set of symptoms.
What if this doesn’t happen? In this case, the doctor may have failed to provide a standard of care.
In general, you and your attorney will need to discuss how to prove the healthcare provider failed to meet typical medical standards for your situation.
What Are Some Common Medical Malpractice Cases?
Medical malpractice can occur in a wide variety of ways, and this is not an all-inclusive list, but here are some common kinds of medical malpractice we see:
- Failing to diagnose a serious issue. For example, if your doctor repeatedly brushes off your symptoms and fails to perform further tests, they might miss that you have a serious condition like cancer. By the time you finally receive a diagnosis, it may be too late for treatment to help you, or you may need a more difficult/dangerous surgery and treatment plan.
- Mistakes made during surgery. Maybe your doctor correctly identified the problem, but something went wrong when they performed the surgery. There is a wide variety of issues that can occur in surgical treatment, including damaging healthy tissue, making mistakes that lead to heavy bleeding, or even leaving surgical tools inside the patient. The last example is one situation in which the statute of limitations may not start until the error is discovered. Unfortunately, many patients spend months or years trying to figure out why they’re still in pain after an operation before finally learning a surgical tool was erroneously left inside their body. Once the item is discovered, you have one year from that date to start a compensation claim.
- Treatment errors. Sometimes, prescribing the wrong course of treatment or using outdated treatment methods can cause problems for the patient.
- Birth injuries. Both the pregnant patient and the baby can be harmed by a doctor’s negligence. Cerebral palsy is a common birth injury caused by a lack of oxygen to the fetus during delivery. Sometimes, a healthcare provider’s failure to perform a C-section or properly diagnose and treat a condition like preeclampsia can have serious consequences.
- Medication mistakes. Unfortunately, errors with giving the wrong medication or the wrong dose are very common, with more than 100,000 cases occurring each year. These can cause serious harm and, in some cases, death.
- Anyone can make a mistake, but bedsores are usually a sign of intentional neglect. These sores happen because a patient who can’t leave their bed isn’t being tended to regularly. They are common in nursing home abuse cases because, in long-term care facilities, patients are supposed to be turned frequently in their beds to prevent bedsores. If this hasn’t happened, it’s because the facility staff neglected their duties to the patient.
- Anesthesia errors. Anesthetizing a patient can be tricky, but if something goes wrong, the patient could suffer brain damage or other issues due to a lack of oxygen. Errors often happen because the anesthesiologist fails to thoroughly review the patient’s history or monitor them during surgery.
- Hospital-acquired infections. Hospitals are supposed to help patients get better, and most hospitals have multiple practices to reduce the spread of germs. If these practices aren’t implemented and followed, patients may develop an infection while being treated for other issues. In some cases, these infections may be drug-resistant and hard or even impossible to treat.
Rely on the CEO Lawyer, Your Tennessee Medical Malpractice Law Firm
If you or a loved one have suffered a medical injury you believe was caused by a negligent healthcare provider, it’s a good idea to consider securing legal representation. Ali Awad, The CEO Lawyer, is an experienced negotiator who can seek a settlement with the insurance company for your damages.
In three short years, Ali Awad converted a new personal injury law firm into an eight-figure company with some of the most experienced personal injury attorneys in Tennessee. More than twenty years of experience means these attorneys have a successful track record of over 99%, and their experience now benefits clients in Tennessee.
The CEO Lawyer has more than a million followers on social media who engage with his entertaining yet useful legal advice every day. If you have questions about your medical malpractice situation, call The CEO Lawyer and his team now at (423) 777-8888 for a free, no-obligation consultation.
