Mobile Emergency Room Errors Lawyer
Have you suffered an injury due to medical negligence at an Alabama emergency room? You may have a claim for your injuries or loved one’s death.
The Mobile emergency room error attorneys at Lattof & Lattof, P.C. represent patients injured by diagnostic errors, prescription errors, administrative and communication errors, surgical errors, and failure to treat.
Contact our law office to schedule a free initial consultation to find out how we might be able to help you recover compensation for your injuries.
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How Will Lattof & Lattof, P.C. Help Me Following Emergency Room Medical Negligence?
When a physician or nurse makes a mistake in an hospital emergency room, the consequences for patients can be life-changing or even fatal. If serious illnesses or injuries are misdiagnosed or delayed in being diagnosed, patients may have a worsened prognosis, permanent disability, or may not survive.
Doctors, nurses, and hospitals that cause harm through negligence or malpractice may be held accountable in an Alabama medical malpractice claim.
Proving medical malpractice can be difficult and challenging, as doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies will go to extreme lengths to defend lawsuits. A skilled Mobile personal injury lawyer can help in numerous ways:
- Countering insurance companies’ delay, deny, defend tactics to draw litigation out as long as possible, and get you to accept a low settlement out of sheer desperation. With an attorney representing you, the threat of trial by jury will linger, and force the defendant and opposing counsel to take a claim seriously.
- Gathering evidence and witness testimony to establish negligence or malpractice. Our attorneys have a vast network of medical expert witnesses in emergency medicine and all clinical specialties. Experts we work with are working doctors who are familiar with standards of care, clinical guidelines, and state and federal laws.
- Identifying all available damages in a medical negligence claim. When medical malpractice involves an injury or illness that requires lifelong medical care, the inability to ever work again, and special accommodations, the medical treatment required can exceed seven or eight figures. We work with medical economists and life care planners to ensure economic and non-economic damages are properly calculated.
Medical negligence in an emergency department is unacceptable. At Lattof & Lattof, P.C., our Mobile medical malpractice lawyers hold negligent medical care providers and hospitals accountable so that our clients receive the full and fair compensation they are entitled to receive. We have recovered millions for our clients in personal injury and medical negligence cases. Contact us to see how we can help you obtain the compensation you deserve.
Representing All Victims of Emergency Room Errors in Mobile
At Lattof & Lattof, P.C., we handle medical negligence and medical malpractice claims involving all hospitals in Alabama, including the four major hospitals in Mobile:
- Mobile Infirmary Medical Center (669 staffed beds)
- Providence Hospital (349 staffed beds)
- Springhill Medical Center (209 staffed beds)
- USA Health University Hospital (183 staffed beds).
Common injuries sustained in an emergency room due to medical error include:
- Appendicitis
- Brain aneurysm
- Heart attack
- Stroke
- Pulmonary embolism (blood clot)
- Prescription drug errors
- Internal bleeding.
A medical expert will be necessary to establish that a medical condition resulted from a doctor’s or nurse’s error and was not an underlying condition and the reason for the emergency room visit. Time is limited to pursue a medical malpractice lawsuit, as Alabama has a statute of limitations that restricts the amount of time you have to pursue a claim.
If you believe you or a loved one suffered harm or a death tragically resulted from medical malpractice at a Mobile emergency room, do not delay contacting us to discuss your case.
Emergency Room Visit Statistics
Emergency rooms are the first stop for people who are hurt with major illnesses or trauma injuries from automobile accidents, gun violence, or gun violence. They are rapidly changing, chaotic clinical environments with constant interruptions, incomplete information, and unreliable information. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has provided the following information about emergency department visits in the U.S.:
- 139 people visit the emergency room every year
- 40 million emergency room visits each year are injury-related
- 10.4% of emergency room visits result in hospital admission
- 40% of emergency room visits have patients seen in fewer than 15 minutes
- 2.2% of visits result in a transfer to another hospital.
Many people visit an emergency room when a situation has become so dire that it is a true medical emergency. A patient that is rapidly deteriorating may need priority, and an emergency room doctor has a duty to recognize the need for priority and act accordingly. In order for a patient to prove negligence in an emergency room setting, expert testimony is usually necessary to establish how a health care provider deviated from the standard of care.
Injuries Associated With Emergency Room Negligence and Malpractice
Every medical professional has a duty to act with a reasonable degree of care and skill. When a doctor is careless in treating or diagnosing, he or she may be liable for medical malpractice. In an emergency room setting, medical malpractice or hospital errors may consist of several types of deviations from the standard of care:
- Failure to diagnose: This can occur if a doctor fails to make a diagnosis or diagnoses a condition that you do not have. The standard of care will establish that a similarly trained, competent physician in a similar situation would not have made the same mistake and would have made the same diagnosis, leading to a better outcome.
- Improper treatment: If another similarly trained, competent physician would have treated you differently, leading to a better outcome, medical malpractice or medical negligence may be established.
- Failure to warn: If your treating physician failed to warn you the risks of a particular treatment, and a similarly trained, competent physician would have warned you of known risks, which may have caused you to forego the treatment, leading to a better outcome, medical malpractice or medical negligence may be established.
If the doctor deviated from the standard of care, which resulted in misdiagnosis, missed diagnosis, or other errors, patients may be entitled to compensation. Many doctors turn away medical malpractice cases because they are not cut and dry compared to other types of car accident cases.
The causation link establishing that serious injury or an illness is the direct result of medical error can be challenging to prove. The lawyers at Lattof & Lattof, P.C., have the resources to invest in medical negligence cases, including hiring the most qualified medical experts.
Our attorneys and staff have a strong understanding of medical negligence cases. As a firm with more than 100 years of collective experience, we are not afraid to take on challenging emergency room error cases.
Common Types of Emergency Room Errors
Hospital errors typically do not involve intentional harm. The most common scenario is a doctor failing to act as a reasonable doctor would, leading to medical error. For example, a doctor could misdiagnose a heart attack as indigestion or heartburn. This failure to properly treat a chest pain patient could be fatal. In another scenario, failure to diagnose and treat an infection could later require limb amputation. Common types of emergency room doctor errors include:
- Patient dumping (releasing/transferring a patient because of a lack of insurance)
- Misdiagnosing an illness or injury
- Prescribing wrong type/amount of medication
- Misreading or mixing up test results
- Downplaying or ignoring symptoms
- Unreasonably delaying treatment
- Relying on an indirect means of diagnosis
- Failure to follow up on abnormal imaging scans or lab tests
- Failure to order appropriate tests or follow-ups.
Seeking out legal assistance as soon as possible with Lattof & Lattof, P.C. can help you determine if you have legal rights in a medical negligence claim against a doctor, medical care facility, or hospital.
Elements of an Emergency Room Error Personal Injury Lawsuit
Emergency room malpractice or negligence claims must have the same elements as any other doctor-patient negligence or malpractice. Errors happen in fast-paced, rapidly changing emergency environments.
At Lattof & Lattof, P.C., we’ve seen firsthand how misdiagnoses and other errors lead to serious injuries and death. Our attorneys, legal nurse consultants, medical expert witnesses work with together to establish the elements of a successful medical negligence lawsuit:
- Doctor-patient relationship and standard of care
- Negligence and causation
- Damages, including future medical care, Medicare set aside, lost earnings, and pain and suffering.
When injuries lead to death, a wrongful death claim may provide compensation for final medical expenses, lost earnings, and loss of love, care, and companionship. After your injury, our experienced medical malpractice attorneys in Mobile can listen to your story and review your potential case. We understand these cases are complicated, with complex medical issues, mountains of medical records to interpret, and future medical costs to calculate.
Schedule a Free Consultation With Our Mobile Emergency Room Error Lawyers
The Mobile emergency room error lawyers at Lattof & Lattof, P.C. represent victims of medical negligence, medical malpractice, and nursing home abuse in Mobile, AL. If you’ve been injured, don’t hesitate to contact our law firm to arrange a time to discuss your legal options at no charge.
We will listen to your story, review your legal rights, and answer your questions. Our team is available seven days a week, 24 hours a day, to take your call. All consultations are free, and under our contingency fee arrangement, we are only paid for our service if we recover money for you.
