Medical Malpractice Lawyer

How common is medical malpractice? What constitutes medical malpractice? Is it worth pursuing a medical malpractice lawsuit? These are all questions you may wonder if you’ve ever considered filing a medical malpractice claim. As you will soon discover, medical malpractice is both prevalent and serious.

What Is Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice is broadly defined as when harm or death occurs as a result of a healthcare provider’s improper care. Medical malpractice is typically a result of negligence in which a provider either does something that causes unnecessary harm or fails to do something they should have done to prevent harm.

How Common Is Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death in the United States behind heart disease and cancer. Over 250,000 people die each year from surgical errors and negligence. Despite the prevalence of medical malpractice, there are only between 15,000 and 19,000 medical malpractice lawsuits each year.

What Are Other Important Statistics About Medical Malpractice?

• The average medical malpractice payout between 2009 and 2019 was $309,908.
• New York has the highest total payout of medical malpractice lawsuits. These amounted to about $7 billion between 2009 and 2018.
• The largest payout was a case in Florida in which a man was misdiagnosed with symptoms of stroke that resulted in $216.7 million of damages.
• About 12 million Americans are misdiagnosed each year.
• The most frequent types of medical errors are misdiagnosis, improper medication, incorrectly identifying a patient, and surgical mistakes.

What Are Some Common Types of Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice is not limited to certain types of errors, but some are more prevalent than others. Surgical errors, such as operating on the wrong body part, operating on the wrong patient, or leaving surgical tools in a patient’s body are all common bases for medical malpractice suits. Medication errors include prescribing the wrong medication or giving the wrong dosage. Diagnostic errors are a third type of conventional basis for a medical malpractice suit, including diagnosing the wrong condition or failing to diagnose a condition. If a patient has cancer and the provider fails to notice it, and this results in harm or death, the provider is liable.

Medical malpractice is frequent as well as a leading cause of death in the United States. If you’re unsure about whether your case is serious enough to warrant a medical malpractice lawsuit, contact a medical malpractice lawyer to learn whether your case constitutes a lawsuit.