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, the best thing you can do is speak with a medical malpractice attorney right away to learn more.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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 expertise 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.
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