Medical malpractice law ensures that compensation is payable to the injured victims of negligence committed by professional healthcare providers including doctors, nurses, dentists, technicians, hospitals and clinics. To be actionable their behavior must deviate from the standard practice of those with similar training and experience which results in harm being caused to a patient. A physician or other healthcare provider is negligent if they have fallen below the minimum standard of skill or care which their profession regards as reasonable however the prescribed standard of care may vary from state to state. In order to claim a compensation settlement it is necessary to establish the following:
- Breach of the standard of care.
To succeed in an application for a compensation settlement using medical malpractice law it is necessary to prove that the healthcare professional made a mistake which a reasonable and prudent professional would not have made under the same circumstances. This point is usually established by testimony from an expert witness who gives evidence that in his view the doctor made a mistake that an experienced doctor should not have made. The mere fact that treatment may have failed is not on its own sufficient to prove negligence.
- Causation.
Medical malpractice law requires that there is a direct link between the doctor's mistake and the injury suffered. Again it is usually necessary to rely on expert testimony to prove that if the doctor had not erred then the patient would have recovered or would have been injured to a lesser degree.
- Damages.
Under US medical malpractice law it must be proved that losses or injury resulted from the doctor's mistakes. An injured person may recover the following damages including both present and future expected losses:
- lost wages
- pain and suffering
- medical expenses
- punitive damages in extraordinary cases
Each state has a ‘statute of limitations’ which specifies the last date on which a claim may be started in court. The purpose of this medical malpractice law is to ensure that a claim is made while information relevant to the case is still available. The regulations vary from state to state and it is important to obtain advice on limitation from qualified medical malpractice lawyers as soon as possible after the event giving rise to the potential claim. Most states have capped the amount of damages that can be awarded and some states have established mandatory arbitration before a case can proceed to court.
Doctors usually provide a high standard of excellence for their patients however there are occasions when things go wrong. We can get you the best representation available anywhere in the country and our lawyers deal with claims on a contingency basis which means they don’t get paid unless they succeed. If you would like free telephone advice from an expert just complete the contact form.
