Medical Malpractice
MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
Medical Malpractice Attorneys in Georgia
Doctors, nurses, physician assistants and other medical professionals have an extremely high duty of care to their patients. That means they are legally obligated to competently provide an appropriate level of care for your illness or injury. That simple concept is a broad umbrella that covers everything from providing a correct diagnosis to prescribing appropriate medications to properly running tests or performing surgeries.
The bar for “appropriate level of care” essentially means the level of care a normal, competent doctor would provide. If a medical professional fails to provide the appropriate level of care, they could potentially be liable for the adverse medical outcomes that result.
However, patients can still die even when a doctor provides an appropriate level of care, which sometimes complicates medical malpractice claims or results in case dismissal.
Medical Mistakes Are More Common Than We’d Like to Think
Doctors should be some of the most trusted professionals in the country. Most Americans want to know they’re healthy or what they need to do to get healthy. We want to be able to trust the people responsible for monitoring our health and treating us when we’re sick.
Most Americans don’t have that luxury. Trust in medical professionals has significantly declined in recent decades. Back in 1966 more than 75 percent of people surveyed trusted medical leaders. In 2018 trust in those health care experts had dropped to just 34 percent.
A disturbing 2018 study from John Hopkins
provided justification for that mistrust. According to the study, medical errors made by U.S. doctors are to blame for more than 250,000 deaths each year. Some estimates are even higher, putting the number closer to 440,000 deaths. That would make medical errors the third leading cause of death in the United States, only exceeded by the deaths attributed to heart disease and cancer.
Proving Medical Malpractice Cases Is Complicated
Medical malpractice cases are more time consuming and expensive to pursue than other types of personal injury law. That’s primarily because there is an added step in the process. Your medical malpractice attorney must find a doctor or medical professional – one who is either teaching or currently practicing in the field of the negligent doctor – to testify to what the appropriate level of care would be in your case.
For example, if your bariatric surgeon made a mistake during your weight loss surgery and you suffered long-term health complications as a result, your lawyer would need to find a practicing weight loss surgeon to go on the record about what the proper duty of care is and how your weight loss surgeon failed to provide that.
Another example would be if you went in for a mammogram and the diagnostician or doctor missed a malignant tumor that should have been identified. Your attorney would need to get testimony from a practicing oncologist or diagnostic specialist explaining what the standard of care is and explain why your diagnostician failed to meet that standard of care.