It’s become increasingly common to hear reports of medical professionals making mistakes. Mistakes ranging from administering medication that a patient happens to be highly allergic to, misdiagnosing condition, or in fatal cases making mistakes that lead to a patient’s death due to human error. These mistakes fall into an area of the law called medical malpractice. It’s an area that aims towards compensating those injured as a result of medical error, deterring poor health care amongst providers and holding health care professional accountable.
Medical Malpractice is professional negligence. It can range from any one of many acts or omissions by a health care provider, which results in treatment being below the standard of the practice among the medical community, causing injury or even death to the patient. The most common is medical error.
Every year an estimated 250,000 people die because of medical error in the United States and an untold number suffer injuries. Injuries, which cause people to live with, pain each day due to someone else’s mistake. 1 in 17 Medicare inpatients experience a serious, avoidable error.
These statistics are avoidable and employing basic safety practices, such as checklists for procedure, could potentially save 85,000 lives and $35 billion each year. Simple changes in procedure like the marking medical records clearly with a patient’s allergies and/or any serious condition that doctors treating he or she should know can reduce the chances of people being harmed.
Instead patients injured due to the negligence of medical providers turn to litigation to provide compensation for their injuries. There were only 10,772 payments to malpractice victims in 2009 (the lowest number on record). The payments made to the small fraction of victims amounted to a total of $3.5 billion.
We believe that patients that fall victim to poor health care are entitled to compensation for the injuries they endure. If you or a loved one has been injured and the injuries are a result of medical error please call us today!
Wooten Kimbrough, P.A. Orlando Medical Malpractice Attorneys