Fort Lauderdale Medical Malpractice Lawyer
Fort Lauderdale Medical Malpractice Lawyer
Typically when patients in need of health care come to a physician for help, they expect to be treated by qualified individuals that are competent and aware of their duty. Unfortunately, there are many times when doctors or other medical professionals may make drastic mistakes. If their actions were a result of negligence or general inattention to detail, it could result in a medical malpractice case. That is where an experienced Fort Lauderdale medical malpractice lawyer comes in. If you or a loved one were injured by the negligent or reckless acts of a medical professional, contact our firm today for a free case review.
What is medical malpractice?
Here are some examples of medical malpractice:
Surgical Error
while doctors are operating on a patient, they may make mistakes while performing a procedure. These could include a wrong incision, incorrect calculation, or even leaving a surgical instrument inside the patient’s body.
Wrong-site surgery
this is a surgery that is performed on the wrong part of the body or on the wrong patient. This is often a result of a miscommunication among medical staff who do not write down information properly or mix-up patients.
Misdiagnosis
in some cases, doctors who are untrained, distracted, tired, or rushed may not take the time to properly look into a patient’s symptoms. They could name the wrong disease, or not make a diagnosis at all, leading to continued suffering of the patient.
Medication errors
any incorrect medication that is given to the patient is known as a medication error. This could result from a doctor prescribing the wrong drug or dosage, or a pharmacist filling the incorrect prescription. Causes could include sloppy handwriting, confusing medications with similar names, or even not asking about a patient’s allergies.
Birth injuries
when a mother or child experiences an injury as a result of a physician’s carelessness or inadequacy, they could get compensated for their birth injury. Injuries could include birth defects, deformities, bruising, broken bones, and many others.
Hospital infections
sometimes, patients develop an infection after they have been in a hospital. People who are in a hospital are usually already in a poor state of health so they are at greater risk to get infection from people who are sick with other diseases. Hospitals have a duty to make sure that everything is properly sterilized after use. If they do not fulfill their responsibility to protect patients from the environment, they could be considered liable.
Cosmetic surgery errors
though cosmetic surgery is supposed to make a person look better, untrained surgeons often make errors that create serious issues, such as scarring, faulty implants, and skin resurfacing.
Get Free Advice From An Experienced Personal Injury Lawyer.
Understanding the Statistics
The most common incident among inpatients involves surgical errors accounting for 34% of all medical malpractice. Outpatients, on the other hand, are most often misdiagnosed making up over 45% of the total issues. Such errors can result in further financial burdens for the families involved as well as lost wages, pain, suffering, emotional trauma, and more. In some cases, punitive damages may be awarded to injury victims in cases where medical professionals knowingly or flagrantly violated accepted medical care standards, safety, or practice.
According to the American Association for Justice, preventable medical mistakes are the sixth leading killer of Americans. A study conducted by the Institute of Medicine has estimated that such preventable errors kill 98,000 persons every year at a cost of 29 billion dollars. Sadly, these errors continue to happen and only 14 percent of all cases are ever really recorded by hospitals according to a 2012 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Personal injury attorneys Craig Posner and Eric Feingold are both excellent attorneys, but more importantly, they are excellent people. I have seen first hand their hard work and dedication to clients. I would not hesitate to recommend their services to others.
– Matthew T.
Do I have a medical malpractice case?
You may be wondering if you are entitled to compensation because of an error that a medical professional made while you were in that person’s care. The two main things that you should ask yourself to determine if you have a medical malpractice case are the following:
- Did a medical professional or hospital make a mistake while treating you?
- Were you injured by that mistake?
If you can answer yes to both of those questions, then you may be able to recover your damages from the person or entity that was responsible. To find out if the medical professional made a mistake, you should look at the standard of care that the doctor should have been practicing. This is the expectation that the doctor treats his or her patient well and with the same knowledge and care as other trained doctors care for their patients. Healthcare professionals that may be careless with their patients’ health can include doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, surgeons, therapists, chiropractors, and other medical specialists, in hospitals and clinics across the nation.
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When you establish that your physician did not hold to an acceptable standard of care, then you need to show that their error caused your injury. Most cases call for at least one medical expert to attest that the doctor made a mistake and caused your injury. These are usually other medical professionals that work in the same field. Get in touch with a Fort Lauderdale medical malpractice lawyer at our firm to help you build a strong case against the person that caused your medical issues.
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Plantation Personal Injury FAQs
When Is It the Right Time to Call a Personal Injury Lawyer?
The right time to call is as soon as possible after your accident. There are many reasons why you need to begin the legal process as quickly as you can. The legal process may even begin without you, with many calls from the insurance company trying to either rush you or to pressure you to give a statement. They may try to catch you unaware and trick you into compromising your legal rights. Hiring an attorney could prevent this from happening.
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Equally important, as time passes from the time of your accident, the evidence that could help your claim can become harder to find. People might quickly clear the scene of the accident, and you may lose the ability to contact witnesses. The witnesses that you have may begin to lose their recollection of what they saw. When you hire a personal injury lawyer, they will get to work immediately to gather the evidence before it is lost.
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Calling a lawyer to get started on your case is a crucial step in the legal process. Knowing that you have someone on the job with the experience and tenacity to fight for you can give you at least some peace of mind during an undoubtedly difficult time.
How Do Insurance Settlement Negotiations Work?
An insurance claim is just like any other negotiation. You have a number in mind for what you think that you should receive for your injuries, and the insurance company has a much lower number in mind for what it wants to pay. Your insurance claim begins when your Plantation personal injury attorney files a demand letter with the insurance company. This is when the adjuster goes to work to try to save money for their bosses.
The insurance adjuster may outright deny your claim or question liability. They may come back with a settlement offer. When the number seems low, and it will, know that this is just their opening offer. Your Plantation injury attorney will likely reject the offer and respond with your own demand.
Eventually, you will lower your number, and the insurance company will raise theirs, and you could meet somewhere in the middle. This is a time-honored dance that personal injury lawyers have been doing with insurance companies since the advent of courtrooms. Even when you seem very far apart from the insurance company, most cases eventually will settle.
What Happens After I File a Personal Injury Lawsuit?
Filing a personal injury lawsuit is an early part of the claim process. Most cases will never go far enough to see the inside of a courtroom. Statistically speaking, a vast majority of personal injury cases are settled out of court. However, if your case does make it to court, you should expect going into it that the trial process may take one to two years to complete. The legal system is far from rushed, as courts and judges have busy schedules and full dockets.
In the short term, you can expect motions and attempts to obtain evidence. Many people associate a lawsuit with a trial, but that only happens after many months of the nuts and bolts of the legal system. The phase of your case that will take the longest time is discovery. This is when the two sides obtain evidence that the other has in their possession. At this point, you may even need to sit for a deposition.
Filing a lawsuit will not cut off settlement negotiations. As was previously mentioned, most cases will settle without a trial. If anything, litigation may give each side more incentive to settle. The two parties usually continue negotiating right up until the point when the jury is seated.
What Evidence Can Prove My Injury Claim?
Negligence is the basis of every personal injury claim. When you file a lawsuit in court, you have the burden of proof. It will be up to you to show that what you say is more likely than not to have happened. You need to back your claim up with evidence.
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Your Plantation personal injury lawyer will work to gather things that can backup your side of the story, including:
— Witness statements from people who say your injury or accident
— Pictures of the scene of your accident
— Security camera footage
— Expert witness testimony that could reconstruct the accident
— Maintenance logs of the area or vehicle involved
— Medical records that can help prove damages
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These are things that can be difficult to get on your own and piece together to tell the story of what happened. Injury lawyers in Plantation, Florida, know how to both get the evidence and use it to prove that someone else was responsible for your accident.
What if I Cannot Work Due to My Injuries?
Your personal injury damages include both economic and non-economic compensation. Economic compensation aims to pay you back for the actual money that you lost. This includes bills that you paid and earnings you lost. This specifically pays you back for lost wages from your job when you are unable to work. Since you would have worked, this is money out of your pocket.
Lost wages in a personal injury settlement are much broader than you think. Of course, this includes the time that you have already missed from work. It also encompasses time that you will miss from work in the future. You do not need to outright miss work to receive compensation for this. For example, if you were qualified for a promotion but cannot get it now because your injury limits you in the type of work that you can do, you can get compensation for the reduction in your earning capacity.
Lost wages are often a very contested part of your personal injury claim because you can bet that the insurance company will see things differently to try to lower its bill. They may dispute what your possible earnings are or use a lower rate of inflation to calculate what they may be in the future.
Hear It From Our Clients
“Ace Your Case Excellent Attorneys”
Personal injury attorneys Craig Posner and Eric Feingold are both excellent attorneys, but more importantly, they are excellent people. I have seen first hand their hard work and dedication to clients. I would not hesitate to recommend their services to others.
“Great Guys Who Take Their Job Seriously”
Great guys who take their job seriously. They took care of me when I had my accident and made sure I was walked through 100% of the way.
“Pleasure And Blessing To Have Ace Your Case Represent My Family”
It has been a pleasure and blessing to have Ace Your Case represent my family. They always kept me updated on our case. The staff was excellent they always got back to me on questions I had. I highly recommend them and will continue to use them if needed.
“Not Only Very Efficient But Caring As Well”
These lawyers are not only very efficient, but caring as well. I would not hesitate to refer them to anyone.
“I Highly Recommend Them!”
Big thanks to Eric and Doug for doing a great job with the handling of my auto accident. I highly recommend them!
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