Category: Medical Malpractice

You may never expect that you could get injured in a hospital because you’re surrounded by people trained to make you feel better. But mistakes can happen in a hospital. There could be a miscommunication error, a mistake on a patient’s chart, or a doctor could misinterpret a patient’s test. Hospital mistakes can be dangerous and sometimes fatal. If you’ve been a victim of medical malpractice, a Louisville medical malpractice lawyer from Thomas Law Offices can help you with your claim.

Medical malpractice can cause devastating injuries that keep you from living your life. Some injuries could possibly have permanent consequences. When you’ve been injured because of someone else’s negligence, you deserve justice. The lawyers at Thomas Law Offices will carefully investigate your case to determine how the malpractice occurred, who is at fault, and how you can proceed.

When we face an illness or injury, we put our trust in medical professionals to help diagnose and treat us, so we can recover and return to our lives as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, there are instances where we leave the care of a hospital in worse shape than when we arrived. When this happens, and it is the fault of a medical professional, it’s called medical malpractice.

Medical malpractice occurs much too often in the United States. The errors that result are currently listed as the third-leading cause of death, right after heart disease and cancer. These errors are almost always the result of human error, which means they should almost always be preventable.

Keep reading to learn about why medical malpractice occurs, and what you can do in the event you or a loved one is a victim.

People usually trust healthcare providers like doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to provide excellent care and help them feel better. It’s not common for people to think those individuals will make a mistake that hurts them. But medical malpractice cases do occur. Something like a missed detail on a patient’s record could mean a healthcare provider doesn’t have all the information about how to treat their patient.

Medical malpractice cases need an expert and skilled attorney to get a favorable outcome. A Louisville medical malpractice lawyer from Thomas Law Offices will fight for your rights and help you get compensation for your injuries.

The Medical Review Panel Act, which was approved by Kentucky’s House and Senate Republicans in 2016, is causing serious delays with medical malpractice claims.

Under the law, individuals are required to submit their medical malpractice claims to a panel before filing a lawsuit. The panel consists of a nonvoting lawyer and three voting health care professionals. Unless they can give good reasons, doctors and other professionals are required to serve if asked and are paid $300 for their time and expertise. After reviewing the evidence, the panel must decide if the standard of care was neglected and led to injury. While this is not binding, it can be used in court.

Since the enaction of this law, there have been 531 claims assigned to the panel. 58 have been examined, 13 have been adjudicated, 18 are pending, and 27 have been withdrawn, settled, or dismissed. The remaining 89 percent have yet to be attended to.

There’s currently a debate in the medical industry regarding the safety of concurrent surgeries—multiple surgical procedures that are performed at the same time in separate operating rooms with one main, overseeing surgeon that travels back and forth between the different patients as it’s safe to do so. For years, doctors and hospitals have argued that concurrent surgeries, often referred to as double-booked surgeries, are safe. Now a new major hip operation study is suggesting differently.

The study looked at over 90,0000 orthopedic hip surgeries at 75 hospitals in Ontario, Canada. It was discovered that the longer the duration of overlap between surgeries, the more likely patients were to suffer from complications within a year after the procedure. These complications included infections and the need for a second surgery.

Researchers found that the complication rate for patients undergoing hip replacement surgery or surgery for hip fractures rose 80-90% if a surgeon was overseeing two operations for as little as 30 minutes. To be exact, the risk of complications rose 7% for every 10 minutes of overlap. Most hip surgeries overlapped for 30 to 60 minutes, the researchers found, but many overlapped for periods as long as 3 hours.