Anyone in New York dealing with health issues would naturally expect medical care and the treatment environment to be safe. Many medical malpractice lawsuits follow adverse and serious reportable incidents that are also known as never events. According to the National Quality Forum, the list of serious reportable events includes drug errors, device and surgical errors, environmental and care errors, and even criminal events. These are all errors that put patients in medical facilities at risk of harm that could also be fatal.
Patient safety can be compromised in any health care settings such as hospitals, doctor’s offices, pathology labs, long-term care facilities and surgical centers. Infections like Clostridium difficile or MRSA can be suffered by hospital patients with surgery or injury-related open wounds or those needing catheters for drug administration or drainage. Older patients are most vulnerable to develop infections.
Drug errors can occur due to problems with the deciphering of the doctor’s handwriting on prescriptions, mistakes in translation when the pharmacist fills the prescription, confusing similar drug names, and errors in times or dosages administered to patients. When it comes to surgical errors, wrong patient and wrong site surgeries make up the bulk of such claims. However, operations that do not produce the expected results are not necessarily regarded as errors.
Medical malpractice is a complicated field of the law and not something to be tackled without skilled legal counsel. An experienced New York personal injury attorney can assess the case and determine the viability of a lawsuit. The lawyer can then work to recover the financial and emotional damages caused by preventable medical errors.
