We entrust our medical care to professionals when we’re hurt or sick. We expect them to provide us with a diagnosis and treatment plan so we can get better. If a physician acts carelessly or makes a mistake while caring for you, it could have devastating consequences.
Patients often suffer severe injuries when the health care provider, whether a doctor, nurse, hospital, or surgeon, engages in medical negligence. You have legal options if you or a loved one has been harmed by a provider’s improper care or mistake. A lawyer at our firm can stand up for you.
When you’re dealing with an injury caused by medical negligence, having skilled legal representation offers you the best chance of receiving the compensation you deserve. Get in touch with Thomas Law Offices today. We will schedule a no-obligation, free consultation to discuss your claim and how you can proceed.
Harm caused by a physician can cause you turmoil. It may seem like a lot to add a legal claim to your life while you seek treatment for your newfound condition. Filing a claim is the only way you can hold negligent parties accountable for their actions and secure the compensation you need to pay recovery costs.
Our law firm has helped many victims get the justice they deserve. While these cases can be challenging to prove, we’re prepared to work diligently and advocate for our clients’ best interests. Let’s look at the advantages of having an attorney at your side.
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How Can an Experienced Medical Malpractice Attorney Benefit You?
When our Cincinnati office represents you, we’ll use our experience or medical expert help to uncover how you were harmed, who was responsible, and the damages and losses you can recover. Our skilled medical malpractice attorneys will pursue compensation to cover your economic and noneconomic damages.
Economic Damages
Economic damages will include financial losses, such as medical expenses. If your adverse outcomes were severe and required extensive care, you’ll likely have bills for both past and future care. Staying in the hospital, prescription drugs, medical equipment, and therapy are possible expenses you may have to cover. You shouldn’t have to worry about how you’ll afford care for injuries that weren’t your fault.
When our Cincinnati medical malpractice lawyers set out to determine your final award amount, we’ll assess your existing medical bills and future care costs to make a demand for a settlement.
Another type of economic damage is lost wages. The initial ailment that brought you to the doctor may have already caused you to miss work. The harm you suffered may have resulted in you missing more workdays. This may lead to you running out of sick time and losing wages. Your lawyer will calculate your missed wages and seek recovery for those lost days of pay.
In some medical malpractice cases, injuries prevent plaintiffs from returning to work. If your ailment prevents you from doing your job, you may be able to recover compensation for your diminished earning capacity.
Noneconomic Damages
Noneconomic damages may not be as straightforward to calculate since they refer to the other consequences of the harm you suffered. Pain and suffering associated with surgery and recovery time are common examples of noneconomic damages your lawyer may also seek.
You can also pursue a monetary award if disfigurement results from a traumatic accident.
Any ailment that prevents you from supporting or comforting your spouse may warrant you demanding damages for a loss of consortium. The financial settlement you recover can also cover situations where a serious injury prevents you from doing these tasks or diminishes how much you can do. It can also cover funeral and burial expenses if the malpractice resulted in a loved one’s wrongful death.
You may find that you suffer from mental anguish as the gravity of the injury sets in. It may pain you to think about how this accident wouldn’t have happened if the other party had acted responsibly. You may feel that your life is changed forever because of their negligence. Your injury may prevent you from doing a hobby or activity you once enjoyed. You may also have to relearn how to do everyday tasks and adjust to a new lifestyle.
This can all be a lot to deal with at once, but our Cincinnati medical malpractice attorneys can alleviate some of your burdens. While we cannot undo your injury, we can seek maximum compensation for you.
According to Ohio Revised Code 2323.43, noneconomic damages shouldn’t exceed $250,000 or three times the economic losses. That same Ohio statute also limits settlements to $350,000 per plaintiff or $500,000 per occurrence.
You may additionally be eligible to recover punitive damages if a negligent party acted recklessly or exhibited gross negligence when injuring you.
Thomas Law Offices will gather evidence like medical records in your medical malpractice case and identify the losses the medical mistake caused. We’ll fight to maximize the financial award necessary to secure your financial future so you can heal.
Common Medical Malpractice Cases We Handle
Our attorneys represent the wrongfully injured. A Johns Hopkins patient safety study highlighted how more than 250,000 Americans die annually from medical malpractice. This puts medical errors above respiratory disease. Most cases are heavily underreported.
Our attorneys are well-versed in ways medical malpractice can occur and how it impacts families. Reach out to our office, located at 250 East Fifth Street, Suite 440 in Cincinnati, OH 45202, if any of the following medical mistakes happened to you:
Birth Injuries
A birth injury can occur during pregnancy or delivery. Pregnancy or childbirth complications often stem from a medical provider’s failure to monitor a mom’s or baby’s vitals. Allergic reactions to medications could also harm the mother or baby.
There may be signs indicating that an emergency C-section is necessary. Doctors need to heed them to safely deliver the baby.
Babies who get stuck in the birth canal may suffer from a lack of oxygen, leaving behind permanent brain damage. Physical injuries to a baby’s head and shoulders are also possible. A baby could suffer fractures or cuts if an obstetrician handles assistive birth devices negligently.
Defective Medical Devices
Medical devices can monitor vitals and be used during hospital procedures. Defective devices may give off inaccurate information or malfunction, causing an infection. There are also instances in which defective medical devices implanted in patients, like hip replacement ones, break down or become dislocated, warranting an additional surgery.
Misdiagnosis
When a doctor listens to a patient’s symptoms, whether they resulted from auto accidents or other personal injury events or manifested naturally, they often keep asking questions until they arrive at a diagnosis. Their determination isn’t always correct, meaning you may take the wrong medication or receive a delayed diagnosis, significantly deteriorating your health beyond what the initial personal injury event, like a car crash, caused.
Failure To Diagnose
Doctors sometimes don’t notice warning signs of serious illnesses, leaving conditions to worsen because of the late diagnosis.
Emergency Room Errors
Emergency rooms can be full of patients needing treatment for minor to major issues. Patients can suffer adverse outcomes if patients with the most urgent needs aren’t prioritized.
Pharmaceutical Errors
You expect to receive the correct medication and the right dosage when you go to the pharmacy; however, a negligent pharmacist could give you the wrong medication or dosage. This oversight could result in an allergic reaction, overdose, or failure to treat your original condition.
Nursing Errors
Medication errors often occur in hospitals. Nurses may administer the wrong or incorrect medication dosage because they misread or can’t understand a doctor’s handwriting, endangering a patient’s life, including causing their wrongful death.
Surgical Errors
Team members must carefully monitor patients and perform surgery well, including operating on the correct patient and body part and taking caution not to make any surgical errors like severing a patient’s vital internal organs.
Surgeons and their nurses must also avoid surgical errors such as leaving tools and sponges in patients so that unnecessary physical pain doesn’t occur and having to perform a corrective surgery isn’t necessary.
Our Cincinnati medical malpractice lawyers will fight for you to receive a fair settlement if a surgical error occurred.
Anesthesia Errors
You could suffer complications, such as waking up during an operation or not doing so promptly and suffering brain damage, if your anesthesiologist makes a mistake when administering a sedative before your medical procedure or surgery.
Lack of Informed Consent
Your medical care provider is supposed to go over the benefits and risks of the surgery before performing an operation so that patients can make an informed choice about how to proceed. Patients can hold doctors liable for not sharing information about the procedure—especially if they can demonstrate that their thorough knowledge of it would have potentially led them to not go through with it.
How Do Medical Errors Occur?
Our law firm will set out to find out why an error happened after identifying what went wrong so that we can determine who’s liable for your suffering. Contributing factors often include:
- Administrative Errors. Hospitals need to keep patient data updated. Incorrect information could put a patient at risk of receiving harmful treatment or result in their death.
- Lack of Protocol. Hospitals need to have safety procedures and protocols to protect staff and patients. For example, a hospital cleaning protocol minimizes the chance of a patient getting a hospital-acquired infection. Protocols also ensure procedures go smoothly, so patients receive the correct procedure and medical equipment is accounted for, so nothing is left in the patient.
- An understaffed hospital gives way to overworked medical providers. Exhausted medical providers may not think clearly and may make mistakes like forgetting to do or communicate something.
- Faulty Equipment. Defective equipment can endanger a patient’s life, especially if it regulates breathing or tracks vital signs.
- New medical professionals may not have the necessary experience performing certain procedures. Inadequate training could lead a staff member to do something they’re not qualified to do, causing a deterioration of their health or their death.
Our attorneys have extensive experience analyzing medical records to determine what led to your harm and who’s liable for what happened before filing your medical malpractice lawsuit.
Determining Fault in an Ohio Medical Malpractice Case
Medical malpractice involves a health care professional acting in a negligent manner that harms patients. Evidence your attorney compiles will aid them in proving that:
- A doctor-patient relationship existed and your provider owed you a duty of care.
- The provider failed to meet their duty of care (it deviated from the treatment another physician would have provided under similar circumstances).
- The patient suffered harm from this mistake.
- That outcome is attributable to a medical provider’s negligence.
When a patient seeks medical treatment, and the physician agrees to treat them, this creates a doctor-patient relationship. The duty of care refers to how other medical professionals would have acted given a similar education and work experience. Medical negligence involves a physician not meeting their duty of care.
Proving negligence occurred may involve you needing to have a medical expert testify about how your provider’s care deviated from the standard protocol. This expert witness may need to review your medical records to learn more about your provider’s mistakes.
Your lawyer will use that expert’s insight when valuing your claim. There are a few different possible parties your attorney may seek to hold liable in your case, including:
- A negligent physician, nurse, or surgeon could have made a mistake due to fatigue, carelessness, or lack of experience.
- Medical negligence could have resulted from the facility lacking procedures for its staff to follow.
- Medical Device Manufacturers. A faulty device could have been manufactured and sent to hospitals, endangering patients’ lives.
Filing a medical malpractice claim can be intimidating. Our legal team at Thomas Law Offices is ready to show negligent parties that you deserve a monetary award for your pain and suffering.
What To Do After an Ohio Medical Error
Time is a critical commodity when you’ve been a victim of medical errors. Acting quickly is key, so you don’t jeopardize any legal options you wish to pursue. Do the following after a medical error occurs:
Contact Our Cincinnati Medical Malpractice Lawyers
Your first step should be contacting a trustworthy medical malpractice lawyer to review what happened and advise you of your legal rights. Thomas Law Offices is ready to evaluate your case and provide you necessary insight to decide on how to proceed.
Don’t Contact the Hospital
Contacting the healthcare provider involved to discuss your case could affect your attorney’s ability to gather records and have medical experts review them, jeopardizing your ability to take legal action. There’s a statute of limitations to hold liable parties accountable, which your Cincinnati medical malpractice lawyer will share with you.
Keep Away From Social Media
Staying off of social media, including sharing updates about your life or adverse experience with a medical provider, is key to protecting your legal rights. You should change your privacy settings to control who has access to your feed but still abstain from making statements about your case.
Your Cincinnati medical malpractice attorney can advise you on how to protect the integrity of your case.
Seek Legal Options for Medical Negligence With Thomas Law Offices
Medical malpractice can cause severe injuries, leaving behind permanent consequences. Getting the care you need shouldn’t cause you so much financial stress that you have to worry about supporting yourself and others who depend on you. You can hold the liable party accountable for their actions and get a fair settlement offer to cover your costs you’ve incurred.
You can wholly focus on healing once you have the settlement award you deserve. You won’t have the constant stress about affording your care when your financial future is secure. Thomas Law Offices can help you achieve that.
Why Filing Medical Malpractice Claims Matters
If you’re weighing your legal options, our legal team can support you in filing a claim to recover the maximum settlement award possible. Filing a medical malpractice lawsuit sends a clear message to the negligent doctor or hospital that caused your injuries that changes need to occur so what happened to you doesn’t happen to anyone else.
During your initial consultation, you’ll learn how our law firm fights for those who were injured because of someone else’s negligence. Our Cincinnati medical malpractice lawyers have experience, resources, and a passion for getting clients the justice they deserve when filing medical malpractice claims.
Also, if filing a court case is necessary, you can rest assured knowing we have experience litigating medical malpractice lawsuits like yours too. We understand the courtroom legal process and will prepare you for what to expect if pursuing this option becomes necessary.
Contact our office for a free case evaluation. We’ll discuss your case and your legal options before initiating settlement negotiations to recover compensation.
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