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The term “Medical Malpractice” is generally used to refer to certain damage-causing errors committed by a medical professional, including doctors, nurses, dentists, physical therapists, hospital staff, clinics, or other medical professionals. Medical malpractice can result from untimely, incomplete, incorrect, improper, or otherwise deficient performance, diagnosis, treatment, referral, or follow up care. It can happen in as many ways as there are varieties and types of medical treatment, including circumstances as varied as direct injuries caused by a deficient or improper treatment, misdiagnosis, late diagnosis, failure to diagnose, surgical mistakes and omissions, mistakes in aftercare or follow up treatment, injuries before or during child birth, prescription and physical therapy errors, radiology and anesthesia errors and more.
Medical malpractice incorporates the notion of a deviation from an accepted standard of medical care. To be actionable, such deviations must (as they often do) result in damage to the patient, or, in cases of resulting death from the malpractice, pre-death damages, and damages to the Estate of the decedent subsequent to death.
A study in the last decade by Healthgrades, Inc., an independent healthcare ratings organization that provides ratings for hospitals, nursing homes, and physicians for found that an average of 195,000 hospital deaths in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002 in the U.S. were due to potentially preventable medical errors. The study involved the examination of 37 million patient records, and applied mortality and economic impact models developed by Dr. Chunliu Zhan and Dr. Marlene R. Miller in a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in October 2003. The Zhan/Miller study supported the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) 1999 report conclusion, which found that medical errors caused up to 98,000 deaths annually and should be considered a national epidemic.
A 2006 Institute of Medicine study found medication errors to be among the most common medical mistakes, harming at least 1.5 million people every year. The study found that 400,000 preventable drug-related injuries occur each year in hospitals, 800,000 in long-term care settings, and roughly 530,000 among Medicare recipients in outpatient clinics. The report considered those to be conservative estimates.
When medical malpractice is suspected, it is important to have the facts of the treatment examined early in order to determine what your rights are. We are here to guide you through this process.
A study in the last decade by Healthgrades, Inc., an independent healthcare ratings organization that provides ratings for hospitals, nursing homes, and physicians for found that an average of 195,000 hospital deaths in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002 in the U.S. were due to potentially preventable medical errors. The study involved the examination of 37 million patient records, and applied mortality and economic impact models developed by Dr. Chunliu Zhan and Dr. Marlene R. Miller in a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in October 2003. The Zhan/Miller study supported the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) 1999 report conclusion, which found that medical errors caused up to 98,000 deaths annually and should be considered a national epidemic.
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