It was supposed to be a quick procedure.

You were supposed to be coming home that day.

Instead, you found yourself being rushed to the hospital because the facility you were at could not help your medical emergency.

Outpatient surgical centers have been popping up all over the place, seemingly making it convenient for people to have relatively minor surgical procedures done. Unfortunately, there have been problems with these surgical centers that have us asking the question: Are they safe?

If you need a Drexel Hill surgical center malpractice attorney, you can count on The Weitz Firm, LLC to be by your side, working to secure the compensation you deserve.

What Is The Difference?

We want to go ahead and frame this discussion with what Medicare says about surgical and outpatient centers:

“They have neither patient safety standards consistent with those in place for hospitals, nor are they required to have the trained staff and equipment needed to provide the breadth of intensity of care.”

Those are strong words for facilities that are often operated by larger hospital chains and physicians.

There are more than 5,600 surgical centers in the United States and they perform millions of surgeries a year. Most of them are done successfully.

Here is the thing – they do have benefits. They offer lower costs to patients, something that really matters. They also only usually perform more minor, non-emergent procedures, ones that can crowd up full service hospitals.

Surgical errors are hard to document because usually it is only required that the huge “never events” get reported. This includes things like operating on the wrong body part, wrong person, wrong procedure, etc. These account for more than 4,000 preventable mistakes a year.

For minor surgical errors, which can be just as dangerous, we do not have solid numbers.

But we do know they happen. Medical mistakes are the third leading cause of death in the US.

There have been numerous instances when the staff of a surgical center has to call 911 to get an ambulance to take a patient to a real hospital because they are not equipped to handle them.

Are these centers more prone to mistakes?

We think so. Often, they are physician owned and the goal is profit. Any time the need for money outweighs the ability to provide a high standard of patient care, the results will be disastrous.

What Happens Now

If you believe the negligence of the surgical center staff has caused you harm, please seek legal assistance. We know that the last thing you expected was to have a medical emergency in the middle of a supposedly safe medical center.

When you need a medical malpractice lawyer in Drexel Hill, The Weitz Firm, LLC will fight to secure the compensation you need to cover all of your incident-related expenses. From medical costs and lost income to pain and suffering damages, we want to make sure you are taken care of. You can contact us for a free consultation by clicking here or calling 267-587-6240.

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