Hospital Negligence Attorneys Philadelphia

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.