Emergency Room Errors
When you visit the emergency room, you expect that medical providers will exercise the utmost care while diagnosing your ailments and providing treatment. Unfortunately, some medical professionals, and even some emergency room procedures fall short of meeting the basic standards of care for patients. Because of this, errors that occur in emergency rooms can result in serious injuries and wrongful deaths across the nation. If you suspect that you or someone you know suffers from an emergency room error, contact Lerner and Rowe Injury Attorneys. Our medical malpractice team will carefully review the details of your case to help determine if you may be entitled to compensation for your injuries.
What is Emergency Room Malpractice?
Emergency room malpractice may occur when:
- A patient under a doctor’s care was harmed because of a medical error, or
- Treatment received in the Emergency Room resulted in harm, not healing
How to Establish the Doctor-Patient Relationship
A doctor-patient relationship is usually established when a patient receives treatment at the ER, a hospital, or private medical practice. Treatment records, patient charts, medical bill receipts, records of admittance, and other documents could help prove that a doctor-patient relationship occurred.
Emergency Room Negligence
Next, negligence must have been present. This can be difficult to prove, since the standard of care in an emergency room is not as strict as the standard of care in a physician’s or specialist’s office.
For example, if you visit a specialist for back pain, the specialist may request X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, and other tests before diagnosing the problem. In an emergency room, however, the physician on call may check for pain and discharge you with some medication and instructions to follow up with a specialist.
It’s important to note that even if you received initial treatment from the ER doctor, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the physician was negligent. Negligence is always a possibility, though. This is why it’s important to get in touch with our medical malpractice team at Lerner and Rowe to help determine if negligence was present at that initial receipt of care.
Resultant Harm
Once a doctor-patient relationship is established along with negligent or careless action, the next step is to prove your injury was caused from your medical provider’s negligence.
In other words, say you suffer from a wrist injury. You visit the ER, and the physician on call discharges you with only medication. Then, over the next few days your pain worsens, so you return to the ER. This time, a different physician finds that your wrist is broken and that the days in between could have contributed to severe permanent damage.
In this instance, negligence may have taken place during the first visit to the ER. Why? As with time-sensitive injuries, immediate treatment is critical, and the misdiagnosis or failure to properly inspect the wrist by the first physician could have caused more harm.
Conversely, if a careless act of a medical provider does not result in harm, it can be difficult to prove they are unfit to practice and should be held accountable for negligence.
Causes of Emergency Room Errors
There are plenty of causes of emergency room errors. Some common errors include:
- Failure to process medical information correctly
- Failure to gather adequate and correct medical information
- Incorrect medical diagnosis
- Lack of adequate medical treatment
- Delayed medical treatment
- Pharmaceutical and medication errors
- Failure to instruct patients to follow up with a specialist
- Overworked staff
- Overcrowding
While some patients’ injuries will have lasting effects with even the best of care, the above scenarios (and many more) could all be linked to negligence found in an ER. If you believe you have been harmed by someone else’s negligence while receiving medical care in an emergency room, contact a medical malpractice lawyer from Lerner and Rowe.
What Can You Do?
If you believe you were harmed by negligence on the part of a medical provider or hospital, you should contact Lerner and Rowe’s medical malpractice team. Our experienced attorneys know the legal process and the proper procedures to pursue a medical malpractice case.
Once you reach out to us, we will tap into our network of top national medical experts. These experts can then testify any findings to prove whether your physician acted in a reasonable or negligent fashion. Without their expert testimony, determining if your physician acted in good judgment could be difficult.
Ultimately, it’s not right that an act of negligence resulted in you suffering harm and subsequent costly bills just for seeking medical care. That is why we suggest that you don’t wait to pursue a medical malpractice case. You may be entitled to compensation, and our legal team will work hard to fight on your behalf to ensure that you receive financial awards to cover:
- Pain and suffering
- Cost of medical bills and therapy
- Cost of any corrective treatments
- Loss of ability to live a happy, fulfilling life
- Loss of work earnings
- Wrongful death
- Acquisition of a disability
Suffer from Emergency Room Malpractice?
If you or someone you know suffered harm after receiving care and treatment from an ER or doctor/physician, please contact Lerner and Rowe Injury Attorneys right away. Our legal team will work hard to get you the compensation you deserve.
Drop by our office Mondays through Fridays from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Alternatively, you can give us a call anytime at 844-977-1900, or you can reach us on the web through a contact form or through our LiveChat feature.
Don’t hesitate to seek the justice you deserve. Contact a Lerner and Rowe medical malpractice lawyer right away!