Many serious injuries and deaths occur in hospitals because of medical negligence and medical malpractice. In fact, the National Institute of Health places the number of deaths by medical malpractice each year around 225,000, placing it as the third leading cause of death in the United States, just after heart attacks and cancer. This alarming number doesn't even take into account how many people are seriously injured each year because of medical negligence.
Many factors are responsible for hospital negligence, including surgery mistakes, anesthesia mistakes, miscommunication between doctors and nurses, failure to diagnose a problem, misdiagnosis of a problem, or failure to provide timely medical care to a patient desperately in need of medical help. Sometimes patients in the emergency rooms are kept waiting so long that a serious medical problem turns into a severe medical emergency. Situations like this can lead to hospital negligence where the services of a hospital negligence lawyer may be required.
Hospital negligence is also the result of medical staff who may be sleep deprived, overworked, or not properly trained to handle various medical problems, or medical emergencies. If a hospital is understaffed, the risk for hospital negligence increases. For example, in September 2012, a cancer patient died from medical negligence in the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland due to an improperly trained replacement nurse accidentally administering a nutritional supplement into the patient's catheter, which was set up for delivering medicine into the blood stream instead.
Negligence in hospitals may even go unnoticed as a patient enters the hospital with a particular problem, but the doctor's negligence ends up causing an entirely new problem. The doctor may simply place the blame on the new problem with the original problem, saying the original problem escalated into the new problem; therefore avoiding the responsibility for causing the negligent act. In this type of situation, an experienced medical malpractice lawyer, especially one who is also a licensed physician such as Dr. Bruce Fagel, will be able to examine the medical records and prove the doctor's negligence was in fact the cause of the severe medical condition.
An additional complication involving hospital negligence and doctor negligence is doctors are usually not employees of the hospital, but instead, independent contractors. This creates an additional veil of protection for the hospitals from medical malpractice lawsuits. Therefore in a medical malpractice lawsuit, the victim of medical negligence must name the doctors involved with the negligence as well as the hospital.
If you or a family member suffered serious injuries as a result of doctor negligence, hospital negligence, or the negligence of any medical professional, you may have a case for medical malpractice. Contact the Law Offices of Dr. Bruce G. Fagel & Associates right away for a free consultation.
