Philadelphia Hospital Negligence Attorneys
Every year, hundreds of thousands of injuries and deaths are caused by medical mistakes, with many of these mistakes occurring in hospitals and emergency rooms. Hospital negligence that can result in permanent injuries and premature deaths may include failure to diagnose, delay in diagnosis, incorrect diagnosis, discharging a patient too soon, administering the incorrect medication, administering the incorrect amount of medication, and the failure to treat. Other forms of hospital negligence relate to surgical errors, leaving surgical equipment inside the patient, infection, failure to consult a specialist, failure to order proper tests, patient falls or other trauma, improperly training staff, understaffing the emergency department, improper maintenance of medical equipment, and insufficient policies or protocols. Hospital negligence is often preventable and can cause or worsen a medical condition, necessitate readmission to a hospital, or require additional medical treatment. Patients have every right to expect and believe that they will receive due care while hospitalized, and should never suffer additional and avoidable harm while in a hospital’s care.
According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), around 15,000 people are seriously injured in hospitals every month due to preventable mistakes and negligence. The HHS launched a patient safety initiative in 2011 to reduce hospital acquired conditions and injuries because hospital negligence has become a national health crisis, according to the director of the patient safety initiative. A staggering one in seven Medicare patients experienced some form of unintended harm that prolonged their hospital stays, caused permanent injuries, or resulted in death after receiving hospital treatments, costing over $4.4 billion dollars in additional health care costs. Common hospital acquired conditions caused by hospital negligence include air embolism, blood incompatibility, pressure ulcers or bed sores, catheter infections, and blood clots. These conditions can result in serious illnesses and death.
Emergency room mistakes and negligence can also cause permanent disabilities, illness, and wrongful death. The average wait to see a doctor or nurse in an emergency room is over three hours. Certain conditions like oxygen deprivation, infections, heart attacks, stroke, and spinal cord injuries may become substantially worse and more devastating with every passing minute. A two year old toddler had to have her feet and hand amputated after she waited over five hours in an emergency room to be seen by a doctor. By the time a doctor saw her, her strep infection overwhelmed her body and she had gone into liver failure. If this innocent toddler hadn’t had to wait so long, and if a doctor or nurse identified the severity of her infection sooner, this little girl would not have been left permanently disabled. Hospital emergency rooms are so overcrowded that many seriously ill patients are sent home after seeing a doctor for only a few minutes, and without having sufficient diagnostic tests performed. Many of these patients will later be admitted to a hospital after they have suffered far worse consequences of their illness or injury than should have been necessary.
If you or someone you love was seriously injured, permanently disabled, or made seriously ill as the result of emergency room or hospital negligence, the experienced Pennsylvania medical malpractice attorneys of Reiff & Bily may be able to help. For over three decades, our team of medical malpractice attorneys, doctors, and nurses have aggressively fought for catastrophically injured and wrongfully killed victims and their families, and have helped win hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to cover medical costs, rehabilitation costs, pain and suffering, and lost wages. Our attorneys have always advocated for patient and consumer safety and we believe that hospitals should be held accountable for negligence, and the preventable injuries and wrongful deaths their carelessness has caused. If you are suffering an injury or illness, you should not have to worry about a hospital mistake aggravating your condition or leaving you with permanent disabilities, and by holding hospitals responsible for their mistakes, we hope to put an end to hospital negligence.
Hospital Negligence Case Results
- Confidential Settlement: For complications resulting from bed sore ulcers while hospitalized.
