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 A Medical Negligence Attorney Can Help You Pick Up The Pieces The American Association for Justice, a group representing medical negligence attorneys, has created a website, www.98000reasons.org, and accompanying web videos to spread the message that medical negligence is a real concern to ordinary citizens. Further, the group asserts, health care reform should not deny the right of those who suffer injury as a result of it the opportunity to seek redress from negligent health care providers. The name of the website, 98,000 Reasons, refers to the number of patients who die because of medical negligence annually in the United States. That, according to the group, is the equivalent to two 737 airliners crashing every day. Given the large number of victims, it would be unfair to limit the right to bring medical malpractice cases as a part of health care reform. The group further illustrates their point by presenting a number of case histories of those who have been injured by physician malpractice. One such case, for example, was that of Leslie Ray of New Milford, Connecticut, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in August of 2006. While receiving radiation treatment, she complained of a tingling sensation in her right arm. The radiation caused permanent nerve damage in her right arm and she has lost all use of it. Debilitating injuries such as this, the group claims, must remain subject to redress via the court system. While undergoing radiation treatment, she noticed tingling in her right arm. Leslie’s doctor ignored her repeated protests. By the end of all her treatments, Leslie suffered permanent injuries to her brachial plexus nerve. Leslie lost all use of her right arm, and now must train herself to be left-handed. The Sun Times Media of Chicago reports a jury has awarded $22.3 million to the parents of a boy who allegedly lost his left leg and suffered cognitive deficiencies and developmental delays due to medical negligence on the part of Advocate Christ Medical Center/Hope Children’s Hospital, in the Chicago suburb of Oak Lawn. According to medical negligence attorneys Antonio M. Romanucci and Stephan D. Blandin who represented the parents, the boy was born Advocate Christ with a congenital heart defect which required a shunt procedure. Two weeks after being sent home, his parents took him to the emergency room at the hospital. While there, the jury concluded, the hospital and staff made several negligent errors including the failure to make a timely diagnosis of the shunt problem, subjecting the boy to an unnecessary cardiac catheterization, improperly applying a pressure dressing to the boy’s leg, failing to monitor his pulse, and improperly destroying an echocardiogram. Jake Tinman was born on May 15, 1999 at Advocate Christ with a congenital heart defect which required a shunt procedure. He was then sent home with his parents, Pamela and Michael Tinman, of Bolingbrook. Two weeks later, Jake’s parents took him to the emergency room at the hospital where a series of delays and overall negligent care led to his injuries. His left leg, which was alleged to have been improperly dressed in the operating room, ultimately had to be amputated. Delayed treatment and cardiac catheterization led to his cognitive deficiencies and developmental delays. test test test Have you or a loved one suffered abuse or neglect while in the care of a nursing home? You’ve come to the right place. A nursing home attorney is a an attorney who specializes in going after poorly run nursing homes on behalf of the nursing home guests who may have suffered because of negligence or worse on the part of the facility. Because many of the issues are the same, medical malpractice and personal injury attorneys are also nursing home attorneys. All are “plaintiffs’ attorneys. That is, all work for victims seeking money to get their lives back in order. As plaintiffs’ attorneys, they usually work for a “contingency fee”. Working for a contingency fee means they only get paid from the proceeds of money that they win for the victim. Because of this, the initial consultation with a nursing home attorney is usually free. The best way to find a nursing home attorney is by checking out plaintiffs’ attorney firms with large advertising budgets. As obnoxious as most ads are, they indicate that the firm is successful in getting money from wrongdoers — that’s how they pay for the advertising. Since going after nursing homes to help victims recover is relatively new, there are few billboards and internet advertisements for them. However, plaintiffs’ attorney firms are easy to spot — they are the ones who advertise to represent victims in cases involving personal injury and medical malpractice. These are the firms you should contact first — remember, referrals are often good, but in the case of lawyers one must be careful of the “charity referral” to a cousin or friend who may lack the resources and experience. Avoid This Costly MistakeDon’t do nothing. You must act. All states require that you take action within a certain amount of time from when the harm occurred. Also, and this is costly mistake made all too often, don’t think that the family can’t bring the nursing home to justice because the elderly guest has since passed away. Usually the estate of the guest who has died has the right to recover money from the nursing home. What is nursing home negligence? How can a legal claim arise from it? If, in the unfortunate event you or a loved one has had a bad experience at a nursing home, you are probably asking yourself these questions. Here’s a quick primer to get you to speed as you consider whether to contact a nursing home attorney to help you get things back on track. Put simply, negligence occurs when someone has a duty to do something (or perhaps not to do something) and they fail to live up to that duty. The duty imposed on a person based on the idea of negligence is different from the duty imposed based on a contract (although as we will see below, the two ideas are often intertwined when it comes to nursing homes). With a contract, a party to the contract has a duty to perform as the contract directs based on the mutual promises it contains. But with negligence, the duty to do or not do something arises from the fact that it is reasonably foreseeable that the failure to live up to the duty will harm someone. Thus I have a duty, say, to trim the branches of a backyard tree carefully because it is foreseeable that if I’m sloppy, or one might say, negligent, a branch might fall on my neighbor’s shed and damage it. I might have to pay him for the shed even though there is no contract between us saying that I must watch out for his shed. In the case of a nursing home, a breach in the contract relationship with the facility — that is, the agreement between the guest and the facility that says the guest will live and be cared for their in exchange for money — may also be negligence. For example, a contract with nursing home may state that the facility will supply fresh linens twice a week. If it fails to do so, then there is a breach of contract and a legal claim will arise from that. It is possible, however, that a legal claim will also arise from negligence in that situation independent of the breach of contract. Why? Because it is foreseeable that if a guest is forced to remain on soiled linens, dangerous bed sores and infections may result. What then is a legal claim based on negligence? Again, it is not overly complicated. If a person is harmed by a person’s negligence, and that harm is capable of having a, in a sense, a “price tag” put on it, then the wrongdoer must pay that price tag. The legal claim, basically, is the victim’s right to ask a court to require the wrongdoer to pay that price tag, or as we say in court to make the victim “whole”. Medical negligence claims are simply about who should bear the financial burden of a health care provider’s mistake — you or the medical malpractice insurance company. All too often victims of debilitating medical mistakes feel pressured to forgive and forget because no one likes the idea of contacting an “ambulance chaser” or being “sue crazy”. This is unfortunate, because the pain and frustration these folks are suffering isn’t their fault. They need professional legal help from a medical negligence attorney to start putting their lives back together. If you or a loved one have suffered harm because of a medical mistake, you are probably wondering whether you have any medical negligence claims. Here is a brief overview of medical negligence (also known as medical malpractice) to help you as you consider contacting an attorney. Medical negligence claims arise when a health care provider makes a mistake related to the medical care of you or a loved one and that mistake results in some kind of harm. Let us look at each aspect of the definition a bit more closely: 1. The situation involves a health care provider. Physicians come to mind first, but there are other types of health care providers that can (and do) occasionally make mistakes that qualify as medical malpractice. Nurses, chiropractors, dentists, podiatrists, even hospitals or physicians groups as legal entities all count. If you are talking about your hair stylist or the counter clerk at the herbal store, however, it is more difficult to show medical negligence unless there is some type of special training or licensing requirement that permits them to provide the kind of health care that went wrong. A good example of this is massage therapy. In many states, there is a strict schooling and licensing regimen that may involve, say, the massage therapist’s ability to spot worrisome moles on their clients’ backs and suggest follow up with physician. The failure to do this would in some states be medical negligence. 2. The health care provider makes a mistake. This is the “negligence” part. That is, the health care provider fails to do something that he or she has a duty to do as your health care provider. The scope of the duty to perform your health services properly is called the “standard of care”. To determine the standard of care, a court asks “what do competent health care providers typically do in cases such as yours?” If for example, a competent health care provider would have found a particular cancer by a certain stage, and yours does not, it is negligence. 3. The mistake is harmful. That is, the mistake causes “damages,” or harm capable of being assigned a monetary value. Often the harm caused by the mistake is obvious. A surgeon, say, amputates the wrong limb, or a physician fails to find a cancer at a stage prior to it spreading. Sometimes, though, the mistake may not be harmful, such as when an illness is misdiagnosed but quickly clears up on its own. There are countless variations of these elements. Your medical negligence attorney will conduct a thorough interview with you at the outset to determine how you should proceed. |
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