Approximate count of 0.2 Million accounts for the deaths due to medical malpractice or hospital negligence every year. This malpractice or hospital negligence, which could have been prevented, costs American economy around $20 Billion a year on additional medical care, productivity lost, and disability.
The Harvard Medical School reviewed the data of insurance companies in lawsuits by medical malpractice lawyers. This indicates that the majority of malpractice lawsuits were due to one of the four types of errors namely surgical errors, diagnostic errors and delays, mismanagement of birth/delivery and wrong medication.
Surgical Errors
Surgery related mistakes contribute towards 25% of lawsuits filed by medical malpractice lawyers. The majority of these surgical malpractice cases occur due to lack of communication although some surgical malpractice cases can be a result of inexperience and carelessness. A communication gap arises when surgeons and their staff have professional and cultural differences. Many hospitals do not have prescribed standard operating procedures and checklist to make sure that required communication is maintained between various staff and doctors during the entire period of the surgery.
Post surgery care is also of utmost importance. A careless and non professional attitude at this stage often results in serious complications. Due to the absence of proper follow-up guidelines, surgeons, nurses, and other staff responsible for the care of the patient fail to coordinate and monitor the patients’ recovery process as a whole.
Diagnostic Errors and Delays
Missed, incorrect or delayed diagnoses are the cause of at least 25% of legal cases filed by medical malpractice lawyers. This kind of malpractice comprises doctor’s failure to timely diagnose the specific pathological condition. Surprisingly, majority of these cases have resulted from two kinds of errors that could have been avoided easily
1. Failure of the medical practitioner to abide by the basic medical guidelines
2. Failure of the Para medical staff of the testing lab, the radiologist, or their administrative staff to promptly report and follow-up the results of tests, like biopsies, indicative of cancer.
Mismanagement of birth/delivery
The medical malpractice cases related to birth or delivery are known as “birth injury” cases. These generally result due to an obstetrician’s failure to timely diagnose and treat a high-risk condition in a pregnant woman, like ttts (twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome), gestational diabetes or preeclampsia. At times, the concerned hospital fails to identify the need of an emergency cesarean due to fetal complication during delivery process. The failure of the obstetrician in observation and precise evaluation of fetal tracing to track any abnormal episodes contribute heavily to such medical malpractices.
Wrong Medication
This category comprises of numerous diverse forms of errors in medication process that can’t be summarized here in such a short space. However, it important to understand that most of these form of errors occurs due to the failure of communication, no use of proper protocol, failure to repeated evaluation of the medication and administration of wrong quantity of dosage.
As you can see, due to the complex and diverse nature of these malpractices, an efficient, experienced and intelligent medical malpractices lawyer is needed to identify the right parameters of the scenario while filing a lawsuit. That’s where Las Vegas DUI Medical malpractice lawyers come into picture offering you all the help to get your righteous compensation.
