Medical Malpractice Attorney Galion, Ohio

Know When You Should Consult With a Medical Malpractice Attorney in Galion, Ohio

To help you decide whether filing a medical malpractice lawsuit makes sense, let’s  first look at when taking legal action is not warranted.

Poor medical outcomes do not, by themselves, provide grounds for filing medical malpractice claims. There are three possible outcomes from any illness or injury:

• The person fully recovers,
• The person stays sick or lives with some degree of disability, or
• The person dies.

One of these three things will happen regardless of whether the ill or injured person gets medical treatment or not. We all know this, but we still trust health care professional to diagnose and treat us to the best of their abilities in order to increase our chances of fully recovering.

It is when a doctor, nurse, pharmacist, hospital, clinic, or long-term care facility fails to do their best that grounds for pursuing a medical malpractice case exist. Medical malpractice is a subset of personal injury and wrongful death law. As is true for all personal injury and wrongful death cases, succeeding with a medical malpractice claim requires the plaintiff to show that the health care provider or health care facility acted negligently when providing services to the plaintiff.

When Is a Doctor, Hospital or Other Health Care Provider Negligent?

Specific types of negligence in medical malpractice cases are as follows:

• Misdiagnoses and failures to diagnose;
• Surgical errors such as operating on the wrong patient or body part, causing injury to a healthy organ, or allowing a patient to develop a postsurgical infection;
• Anesthesia mistakes, particularly those that result in brain injuries due to the interruption of the flow of oxygen to the brain;
• Medication errors such as administering the wrong drug or dispensing the wrong dosage;
• Birth injuries to either the mother or the newborn, particularly cerebral palsy; and
• Nursing home abuse and neglect.

We describe each type of case on this web page.

A health care provider is typically considered negligent when they do not meet the standard of care due to a patient. Showing that the standard of care was not met requires, at minimum, answering the following questions:

• Was the plaintiff a patient of the defendant?
• Did the defendant diagnose, treat, or provide health care services to the plaintiff?
• Would a similarly situated provider or facility make the same decisions and take the same actions regarding the patient’s condition and well-being?
• Did the patient’s injury or death result directly from the defendant’s negligence in meeting the applicable standard of care?
• Was the patient’s injury significant or severe?

Each of those basic questions encompasses its own set of tough queries. For instance, determining what makes one doctor similarly situated to another requires looking into issues of education, training, available equipment, and current best practices. Finding answers almost always demands commissioning reports and taking testimony from expert witnesses. An experienced Galion medical malpractice lawyer will know how to contact and work with expert witnesses.

Making the Call

But, again, how does a patient or their family know when to reach out to a medical malpractice attorney? The short answer is when they truly believe that the care received was substandard and harmful. Arriving at that decision can be simple, such as when nursing home staff allows an elderly parent to repeatedly fall out of bed or to develop life-threatening bed sores.

Making the determination that a health care provider acted negligently can also be quite difficult. People who have not completed medical school and become board-certified oncologists or radiologists will probably not know for sure whether a cancer diagnosis should have been made in time to permit effective treatment.

In the later circumstance, it often makes sense to at least speak with a medical malpractice attorney about the possibility of succeeding with a claim. Lawyers in the Galion offices of Agee Clymer offer free consultations to potential clients, and we take appointments online. Calling (614) 221-3318 will put you directly in touch with an attorney.