Doctors everywhere are expected to provide a set standard of care as a prudent healthcare professional. Yet, medical malpractice is an everyday occurrence. In fact, according to data from the Civil Justice Resource Group (CJRG), there are between 65,000 and 200,000 deaths each year due to medical accidents. Botched surgeries, erroneous prescriptions, and other mistakes are all too common throughout the healthcare industry.
However, while many of these incidents are purely accidental, many are the result of severe medical negligence on the part of care providers. As noted by CJRG, 25,000 to 120,000 of the above deaths are due to medical malpractice. Worse yet, they note that the, “Ratio of injuries and deaths caused by malpractice in hospitals to that reflected in medical records” is four to one. In other words, for each medical malpractice case that gets reported, there are four more that occur.
Florida medical malpractice cases can leave survivors permanently scarred or debilitated—altering the course of their lives forever. However, medical malpractice cases are also notoriously difficult to pursue—partly because of the need to establish malpractice liability and gather copious evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the care provider.
For example, say you were to go in for gastrointestinal surgery at one hospital, and they forgot to suture an incision post-op. A few weeks later, you go to another gastroenterologist for another treatment, but they miss the open internal wound. Fast forward three weeks, and you’re rushed to the emergency room with a case of borderline septic shock. After an exploratory surgery, the internal wound is found and closed—but it takes a week of bedrest and nearly $400,000 of treatment expenses to recover.
However, when you decide to pursue a medical malpractice case, both of the previous doctors point to the other and claim it’s not their fault. The malpractice injury case may stall because there isn’t sufficient evidence of which doctor made or missed the suture.
If you or a loved one has been injured as a result of medical negligence, it can feel almost impossible to pursue a medical malpractice case. There are many obstacles to proving a malpractice injury case to a court—not the least of which is gathering evidence of the care provider’s malpractice liability. Some key steps in pursuing a medical malpractice case include:
Proving a doctor/patient relationship existed in the first place
Establishing that the doctor committed negligent actions that a competent care provider would not have in the same circumstances
Proving that the injuries suffered were caused by the doctor’s medical negligence (meaning the doctor breached the standard of care)
Showing how the injuries caused damage—pain, anguish, loss of income, extra medical costs, etc
