If you are ready to keep a close eye on the calendar, you might be able to win a case against a hospital. Understand, though, that in some states the patient that has suffered the discomfort caused by the hospital’s practices must file a personal injury complaint within 1 year of noting the effects of the hospital’s actions.
The affected patient should discuss the potential case with a lawyer.
Personal injury lawyers in Edmonton are aware of the options available to someone that has been harmed by a hospital’s actions.
Lawyers’ training has prepared them for the task of helping a client carry out all the necessary steps.
Procedure to be used by anyone that intends to sue a hospital
Identify the negligent person or organization.
—It could be a member of the hospital’s staff
—It could be a private contractor
Collect your medical records
Consider all of your losses; do not forget to include your lost earnings.
Learn what procedure you must use
—In some states, an injured patient must submit a claim to the medical review board, before filing a formal complaint. In any such state, a patient’s warning, about making a call to the review board could trigger immediate results. For instance, the affected patient could receive the requested treatment that same day, even if it was a Sunday.
What might be the grounds for a lawsuit against a hospital?
• Nurse gave a patient the wrong medicine, or wrong dose of prescribed medication.
• Pathologist failed to do a routine test.
• A request to have procedure done “stat,” meaning quickly is ignored.
• Patient reports that nurse was watching TV daily, instead of caring for patients.
• Poor methods for fighting infections aid development of post-surgical infection
Failure to give all the details of a certain procedure, when asking permission to perform same procedure: This could be used if the patient had been harmed during the procedure’s performance.
• Patient dies during course of operation
• Laboratory gives an incorrect test result, if mistake caused harm to patient.
• That institution has uncertified doctors caring for patients.
What could happen if any of the conditions listed above were allowed to continue?
In all likelihood, other patients would be hurt. One of more of them might file a complaint. Over time, the guilty hospital would probably have to close.
That is what happened to one hospital. It allowed a post-surgical infection to develop in a patient. Later, that same patient had an infected implant, one that had to be removed and replaced. The institution in which those events transpired is no longer in operation. The many other hospitals have shouldered the job of caring for those that would have gone to the closed facility.