Philadelphia Hospital Negligence Attorney

There is no hiding the fact that anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 people die each year due to medical mistakes. They are the third leading cause of death in the US, trailing only heart disease and cancer.

How does that happen?

Many of the errors occur because of treatment, or lack thereof, that a patient receives in a hospital. There are many things that can go wrong and most of them are preventable. Let’s look as some of the main ways people are harmed in a hospital setting:

• Misdiagnosis – it happens all too often, so much so that Johns Hopkins researchers say it accounts for the most severe patient harm.
• Medication errors – most patients experience medication errors when they are in the hospital. This can take the form of them being given the wrong medication, the wrong dosage of a medication, or not being given their medication at all.
• Hospital overcrowding – there are many consequences of hospital overcrowding. If doctors and nurses are busy and cannot spend much time with patients, they could fail to recognize and treat emergencies. Also, many hospital administrators pressure early discharges in order to free up bed space for more paying patients.
• Surgical mistakes – from major mistakes sure as operating on the wrong body part to smaller, but just as deadly, mistakes such as bowel perforations, surgical errors are scary.
• Infections – 1 in 10 people admitted to the hospital will contract a hospital-acquired infection. These infection are usually preventable, but stem from a lack of care on the part of hospital staff.

No, simply because you are not satisfied with the results of your surgery, medical treatment, or other procedure does not entitle you to pursue a medical malpractice claim in Pennsylvania.

In fact, doctors never give guarantees when it comes to medical results. Just because the results of your treatment or surgery are unsuccessful or unexpected does not necessarily mean that hospital negligence occurred.

In other words, if you are not happy with the course of treatment or the medical results, you cannot sue for medical malpractice unless the hospital or its staff members failed to provide quality care. Likewise, any deviation from the accepted standard of care applicable to a particular medical procedure is considered medical malpractice.

It may seem that emergency rooms are supposed to be the most error-free places in the healthcare industry. Unfortunately, that is not true.

Fortunately, our Philadelphia hospital negligence lawyer knows what you can do to prevent avoidable negligence on the part of medical professionals in emergency rooms. Here are the steps you can take to avoid injury in an emergency room:

• Ask what the staff members are doing and why, especially when receiving any medication, treatment, or diagnosis; and
• Get all of your discharge information in writing, including the names of the doctors who provided medical care.

These two practical tips can help avoid preventable medical mistakes and negligence when visiting emergency rooms because ERs are infamous for their personnel shortages and are known to be high-stress environments where errors can be made by burnout physicians, overworked or sleepy doctors, inattentive or incompetent medical professionals.