Medical malpractice negligence can turn your life upside down. If you have been neglected, abused, or otherwise harmed by a doctor or other medical professional, you can be left with serious consequences, risks to your health, additional expenses, and without a clear sense of where to turn. Proving medical malpractice requires meticulous investigation and preparation. Experience and an understanding of the medicine, health system, and legal issues is the key to making a powerful claim in a court of law and protecting your rights as a patient.
Step 1: Determining Who is At Fault
Especially for cases involving a botched surgery or injury resulting from inpatient care, several providers are involved and responsible for various aspects of patient care. Identifying who was involved and responsible for what aspects of a patient’s management is essential in successfully investigating and prosecuting a medical negligence action. This analysis requires a thorough review of the medical records as well as an understanding of medical facility and healthcare system protocol and procedures.
Step 2: Proving the Standard of Care
Your medical providers owe you a duty of care. This duty is defined by Illinois law as what a reasonably careful medical professional would do under the same or similar circumstances.
What Is the Duty of Care In Healthcare?
What constitutes reasonably careful medical care varies from patient to patient and situation to situation. Therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to prosecuting a medical negligence claim. Instead, expert testimony and a careful review of the medical records and medical literature is required to establish the standard of care required in a given context. Duty of care may include keeping accurate records, establishing a differential diagnosis, making appropriate treatment decisions based on available information and patient history, obtaining informed consent from you before performing medical procedures, providing appropriate monitoring for continued care and follow-up treatments, as well as referring you to specialists when necessary.
How to Prove the Breach of that Duty
Examples of a breach of duty of care can include misdiagnosis or diagnostic errors, failure to diagnose, delays in diagnosis, delays in treatment, surgical errors, anesthesiology errors, medication errors, birth injuries, errors in inducing labor, or emergency room negligence.
Step 3: Proving Causation
The next step in how to prove negligence in medical malpractice cases is to illustrate clear causation. This involves providing evidence that the healthcare professional’s action or inaction was the source of your injury or illness.
Linking Negligence To the Injury
The actions of the nurse, physician, technician, or other healthcare professional who failed to provide appropriate caremust be linked directly to your injury. A common defense in malpractice actions is that the harm you have suffered was not the result of the doctor’s actions. For instance, a patient who suffers a stroke is not given a stroke by the doctor. However, if the doctor failed to timely treat and/or diagnose a stroke, they may be held liable for the harm that the stroke would not have otherwise caused.
How Experts Help Prove Causation
Your Chicago injury law firm can help draw the link between medical negligence and harm caused to the patient, with the help of medical experts and other evidence. Outside consultations are meant to help establish proof and determine damages, ensuring that your negligent doctor’s assessment does not prevent you from receiving appropriate compensation and care moving forward.
Step 4: Documenting the Damages
In all injury cases, evidence of the harm suffered is necessary. The amount and kind of harm you have suffered is what will determine the level of compensation you can recover from a medical malpractice case.
Types of Damages in Medical Malpractice Cases
A medical negligence lawsuit is compensated with two different kinds of damages. They include:
- Economic damages: Economic damages are dollar-amount costs like your medical care and treatment for the harm you have suffered, prescription medication costs, lost wages, future lost wages due to disability, and more.
- Non-economic damages: Non-economic damages relate to the intangible consequences accompanying an injury. These components of loss still require proof and include your pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment in your life, disability, disfigurement, and emotional distress.
It is important to note that punitive damages are not an option to receive in medical malpractice cases in the state of Illinois. After a devastating malpractice case, a Chicago injury lawyer will know how to structure your claim to help you receive the best possible compensation.
Gathering Evidence to Prove Damages
Your medical records are often the most important evidence in medical negligence cases, but phone records to establish patient follow-up or timing of encounters with care providers, photographs, and videotape of you prior to and after your injuries are equally compelling and necessary.
Step 5: Gathering Evidence in a Medical Malpractice Case
You will need to obtain full access to your medical records before you file a Chicago medical malpractice lawsuit. Other kinds of documentation might include discharge instructions, medication labels, communications with healthcare providers, diagnostic testing you have undergone, billing and additional paperwork from your care, as well as expert testimony to support your claim for damages.
Medical records
While your medical records are considered confidential under the Illinois Department of Health and Human Services HIPAA Right of Access Rules, you have the right to request access to them for review purposes. These records are often the key to discovering mistakes, inconsistencies, and negligence in your care.
Witness Statements and Expert Testimony
Statements from other medical staff on call during the time of the malpractice, as well as outside expert testimony, can help bolster your claim. Hospital administrators may be subpoenaed to provide information about standard practices as well as rules and protocols imposed upon the medical staff that they employ.
Additional Evidence
Photographic evidence, emails, previous records of patient complaints, and anything else that helps illustrate the harm or negligence associated with your claim may be considered when building your case.
Step 6: Filing a Medical Negligence Lawsuit
Your Chicago injury lawyer is your guide throughout the legal process for filing a medical malpractice negligence claim.
Legal Process for Filing a Claim
Once you have consulted with your legal representation, you will likely need to provide access to your medical records as well as informed consent for outside medical evaluation to strengthen your claim. The firm will then take the lead in investigating your claim, assembling evidence and documentation, obtaining review from expert witnesses, filing the required Affidavit of Merit, communicating with the opposing side’s attorneys and insurance personnel, appearing in Court, as well as filing your lawsuit in the appropriate jurisdiction, venue, and within the appropriate timelines and filing restrictions.
Once these steps have been completed, our law firm will negotiate for appropriate compensation, advocate for your recovery, and present your claim in Court as necessary.
Illinois Statute of Limitations
Certain conditions can take longer to come to light after medical malpractice. The statute of limitations in Illinois is generally two years from the date you knew or should have known of the malpractice. However, there are various exceptions to this general rule and timeframe that require analysis and could lengthen or foreshorten the applicable limitations period. In cases involving minors, for example, the deadline is extended eight years from the date of the negligence or the child’s 22 birthday, whichever comes first.
Common Challenges in Proving Medical Malpractice Negligence
Healthcare organizations and insurance companies may fight tooth and nail to prevent harm to their reputation as well as attempt to avoid a payout. Some common challenges to medical negligence claims include:
Burden of Proof
Your doctor is generally considered the expert in your medical care – so what happens when they fail to provide adequate attention or act negligently? The burden of proof challenges can be difficult to answer without matching the defense’s expertise with equally respected outside medical opinions. Our firm can provide you with not only the legal strategy you need for a successful claim, but also the professional firepower necessary to illustrate injury, causation, and duty of care.
Why You Need a Medical Malpractice Lawyer
An attorney at Power Rogers can walk you through every step of the medical malpractice case process, ensuring that you are never alone in building, presenting, and prosecuting your claim.
Expertise in Resolving Complex Cases
Your medical malpractice lawyer at Power Rogers is the main strategist behind ensuring that the right care providers are identified and prosecuted and that all available damages are considered.
Maximizing Compensation For Clients
There may be additional methods to maximize your compensation when a healthcare organization as a whole is held accountable for negligence. For instance, a hospital that places under-qualified staff in charge of your care or emergency room shifts without supervision may be held liable after a detailed verification of their hiring and training practices.
Your medical malpractice attorney as a trained negotiator and litigator will be able to examine every angle of your claim and will not be afraid to stand up to powerful corporations or the government.
Have More Questions? Contact Power Rogers to Learn More About How We Can Help
No one should have to prove medical malpractice negligence alone. At Power Rogers, we have a firm and proven commitment to protecting injured Chicagoans and fighting for justice. Our experienced attorneys are dedicated to protecting patients who have suffered medical negligence. If you need help building your claim, contact us today for a consultation.
