How To Check if Your Doctor Has a History of Medical Malpractice

Medical malpractice is a big problem in Chicago. However, it’s not just isolated to our area of Illinois. It’s an issue nationwide.

Data published by the Association of Health Care Journalists highlights how medical errors have become the third-most leading cause of patient fatalities in our country.

Additional reporting from Johns Hopkins Medicine notes that diagnostic errors are particularly a concern. Statistics they compiled suggest that as many as 795,000 Americans either suffer permanent disabilities or die due to being misdiagnosed or receiving delayed diagnoses every year.

Considering how concerning the above information is, you may wonder how to check if your doctor has a history of medical malpractice. Let’s deep-dive into the issue so that you can make more informed choices about the healthcare you and your family members receive.

Understanding What Medical Malpractice Is

Before we get into how to look up a doctor’s history of medical malpractice, we need to first define what medical malpractice is. Since it’s a type of personal injury, generally, these errors that health care providers make that result in patients suffering harm are caused by negligence. However, they can also be caused by intentional acts.

Common examples of medical malpractice, in addition to the diagnostic errors described above, include:

• Surgical errors
• Birth injuries
• Medication errors
• Radiologic reading errors (i.e., misreading X-rays)
• Anesthesia errors

In short, a wide range of situations, whether they fit into the above categories or not, may qualify as medical malpractice. The key delineator that determines whether a doctor, nurse or other health care provider engaged in malpractice is whether they deviated from the norm a similarly trained professional in the same geographic area would have followed (and is that act responsible for the adverse patient outcome that occurred).

How To Check if Your Doctor Has a History of Medical Malpractice

There are two primary ways to check in on your healthcare provider’s background to see if they have been accused of malpractice. Those ways include:

Visiting the State Licensing Board Website

A good starting point to check if your doctor has a history of malpractice is the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) website. There, they have an Enforcement Actions License-Look Up tool, where you can search by a clinician’s license number (if you have it) or simply their first and last name.

When looking at the records that pull up, you’ll see where there’s an “ever disciplined” column. If you notice a “Y” in that column, you may want to click on the “Detail” button in the far left column to read additional information about the nature of the disciplinary action that may have been taken against them.

Just note these actions can be for a number of reasons, including committing a crime, engaging in medical malpractice, or other purposes.

If you know or have read in your physician or other health care provider’s biography or by performing an online search that they have resided and worked in another state, be sure to check the professional licensure site in those jurisdictions as well for similar information.

Check Court Records

While the expectation is that doctors will report any issues that arise and it will get recorded on the site above, it’s not a guarantee. That being said, you may want to look through Cook County civil court records, for example, to see if any pending or resolved cases show up under your healthcare provider’s name. Any cases ever filed with the court, as well as adjudicated (resolved) ones, will show up there.

While details surrounding the case and the terms of the settlement may be password-protected and/or confidential, you should, at the very least, be able to see who sued them and any verdict rendered in the case.

Getting Help If Medical Malpractice Harmed You

If a healthcare provider unexpectedly harmed you and you’re seeking to find out if they’ve done this before to someone else, let our legal team at Thomas Law Offices help you. We offer free consultations during which we may be able to help you investigate your medical professional’s potential malpractice history.

Initial consultations with a medical malpractice attorney in our Chicago office is free.