When you’re weak and vulnerable from an illness or injury, the last thing you need is for a medical practitioner in Illinois to exacerbate your condition or cause other injuries due to negligence. Such mistakes are inexcusable and should never happen, but they still do. Here are some facts you need to know about hospital negligence.
What is hospital negligence?
Whether in hospitals, clinics, dentist offices or any other licensed facility, health professionals owe their patients a standard duty of care. The law requires them to always act in the best interest of others and never act or fail to act in a way that can harm their patients. Medical malpractice is when they fail to uphold their duty of care.
Some facts about hospital negligence
A hospital is where someone goes to get life-saving treatment, yet medical negligence is the third-leading cause of death in the country. Approximately 300,000 people lose their lives every year because a medical practitioner made some error, and 195,000 of them die due to preventable mistakes.
What to do in case of medical negligence
When you or your loved one suffers due to the negligence of a healthcare professional, you may be eligible to sue them to get the compensation you deserve. The court will look at four things when deciding on your case:
1. Your relationship with the doctor – You must prove that you hired the doctor or signed up with the hospital you went to.
2. Medical practitioner negligence – You need to prove that a competent doctor wouldn’t have caused you harm that your doctor did under the same circumstance.
3. How their negligence caused you the injury – You must show that the doctor’s negligence directly caused the injury you are suffering.
4. The specific damages sustained – You can only sue if you suffered harm from what the doctor did or did not do.
The compensation you might get from suing a hospital could include lost work and earning capacity, medical bills to pay for the correction of the harm caused, mental anguish and physical pain. Although it cannot restore your lost health, being awarded damages could help you recover.
