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At Hickey Law Firm, P.A., we can help if you, or your family, have been injured as a result of the medical mistakes of a doctor or hospital. An attorney serving Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Tampa, Orlando, and anywhere else in Florida can provide your family with sound legal counsel and the representation you need to obtain a successful case resolution. If a healthcare provider fails to perform his or her duties to a professionally accepted standard of care, and causes an injury as a result, the victim can file a medical malpractice claim for damages. Contact our Miami law office today to schedule a free consultation and case review. We can review your case and determine your claim eligibility. We take cases only where the unsafe, bad practices of the doctor or hospital cause serious, debilitating, and permanent injury or death.

Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

According to statistics posted on the Center for Justice and Democracy, up to 98,000 people are killed each year by medical errors in hospitals - far more than die from car accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS - and eight times as many patients are injured by medical malpractice as ever file a claim.

Medical malpractice occurs when a doctor, nurse, or other healthcare provider fails to treat a medical condition, makes an incorrect diagnosis, fails to make a diagnosis, delays treatment, prescribes the wrong medication, or neglects to administer appropriate care after a diagnosis is made, as a result of negligence. Medical science is not exact, and there are some inherent risks in receiving medical care. In medical malpractice cases, the victim must prove that the doctor or hospital broke the accepted rule, which is the standard of care for that disorder or in that surgery. Our firm recommends that individuals follow the suggestions of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a division of the U.S Department of Human & Health Services. Their website is an excellent patient resource; an article titled "20 Tips to Help Prevent Medical Errors" provides tips for patients to help prevent medical errors when visiting a doctor or hospital.

There are basically 3 types of medical malpractice: misdiagnosis, errors during a procedure, and choosing not to treat a condition.

Misdiagnosis happens when the doctor chooses not to follow the rules of what they call the “differential diagnosis”. Under this rule in medicine, the doctor is supposed to consider every possible conclusion from his/her patient’s symptoms. All over the world, doctors are trained that the “standard of care”—the minimum which they have to do for each and every patient—is to consider all of the possibilities from the symptoms. If a 56 year old man goes to his cardiologist and complains that he has been feeling indigestion for 2 weeks, and chest pain when he jogs, the doctor should at least consider that it could be a heart attack. When choosing what to treat, the doctor should choose the safest alternative. If the symptoms indicate maybe a heart attack, the doctor should treat for the heart attack. If the doctor chooses to talk a chance and not treat for a heart attack, he or she is breaking a basic safety rule of medicine, and he or she is endangering the lives of us and our families.

Misdiagnosis can take place in the emergency department of a hospital, in the hospital itself, or in a doctor’s office. When you go to your doctor’s or to a doctor in a hospital, the basic safety rules of medicine applied: the rule of differential diagnosis and the rule that the doctor should choose the safest alternative when treating (for certain symptoms, there is a set of possibilities the doctor has to consider).

Failure to treat or choosing not to treat a condition can be related to the differential diagnosis: this choosing not to treat occurs in hospitals and nursing homes where you or your family had a condition and the nurses and doctors do not treat it. This occurs sometimes because the doctor does not follow the rules of differential diagnosis (with certain symptoms you must consider certain alternatives).

Failure to treat a condition also can occur because the staff—nurses and others—in a hospital choose not to follow the hospital safety rules. Safety rules for people who work in hospitals are in 3 places. First, the hospital should have written procedures in a manual. For example, the hospital manual can require that the nurses or others go into the patient’s room and actually look at the patient to check on them, or to turn them over if they cannot move, once every ½ hour. If the staff chooses not to do these checks, they are endangering our lives.

The second set of safety rules for people who work in hospitals is the rules which are taught in their school and on the job, but may not be written. These rules are part of the “standard of care,” that is the minimum expected of the doctor and staff. The rules from school or on the job include all of the ways they are supposed to care for a patient and carry out medical testing. For example, there are set procedures for lifting a patient from the bed to a gurney to move them.

The third set of safety rules for the hospital staff are doctor’s orders. If the nurses in a hospital do not follow doctor’s orders, they are not following the rules. The hospitals procedures usually define the “standard of care” for all hospitals. Again, this “standard of care” is the minimum of what the hospital staff should do for you or your family.

The third type of malpractice is errors during a procedure. Actually, there is a “standard of care” for what to do before, during, and after a procedure (a test or a surgery). Before any surgery, there should be a clearance or series of tests administered by an internal or family practitioner, or general practitioner. During surgery there are also rules to follow, that is a “standard of care”. These rules define what is reasonable. If the doctor chooses not to follow these rules, he or she is choosing not to do what is reasonable. Before the surgeon cuts something, he or she must verify, look at and palpate or feel at it, and then separate it if possible.

In cases of medical malpractice, you and your family may be inundated with medical expenses and other costs. In severe cases, the victim may be permanently disabled, preventing him or her from returning to work, and the victim may experience emotional pain and suffering. If you or someone you love has suffered as a result of medical malpractice, an attorney from our Miami, Florida law firm – serving Fort Lauderdale and beyond – can help you obtain compensation for the damages to fix what can be fixed and help what can be helped include past and future medical expenses, loss of income in the past, loss of ability to earn income in the future. The damages to balance the harms and losses are for past and future pain and suffering, disability, disfigurement, scarring, mental anguish, and loss of ability to enjoy life. In the tragic event of a loved one's death, we can also help your family file a wrongful death claim against the liable parties. It is important to seek legal counsel if you feel you have a medical malpractice claim, as in the state of Florida, the statute of limitations - the time period in which you can file a lawsuit - for medical malpractice cases is two years from the date of the incident, or from the date when medical malpractice was or should have been discovered. The exception is medical malpractice on ships as to passengers. There, the time limit is ONE YEAR from the date of the negligence.

We trust doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers to provide appropriate medical treatment and care. Unfortunately, some healthcare providers act negligently in the course of their duties and fail to offer adequate treatment that meets the accepted standard of care. A failure by a healthcare provider to perform his or her duties with the utmost care can easily result in serious injury or death. If you have suffered an injury as a result of a healthcare provider's negligence, you can file a medical malpractice claim. An attorney from our Miami office – serving Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Tampa, Orlando, and anywhere else in Florida – can assist you with the legal process of filing a lawsuit for damages.

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Contact Our Miami Law Office

If you have a medical malpractice case, don’t hesitate to seek assistance from an experienced attorney serving Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Tampa, Orlando, and anywhere else in Florida. We can help. Representing honest, seriously injured people in cases of personal injury, wrongful death, maritime or cruise ship accidents, aviation and airplane crashes, slip and falls, trip and falls, car accidents, truck accidents, product liability, medical malpractice, professional negligence, wrongful prescriptions, sexual assault, assault and battery, and negligent security, in cases where they have suffered wrongful death or injuries with permanent impairments or disabilities such as orthopedic injuries which include broken bones or torn ligaments or tendons, injuries to the organs, neurological injuries, head and brain injuries, burn injuries, psychological injuries from trauma, or scarring and disfigurement We can change bad practices of hospitals and doctors. We provide safety and security for you and your family. You deserve to be compensated if you have been injured by a medical professional’s negligence or wrongdoing. To speak with an attorney who handles medical malpractice cases in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contact Hickey Law Firm, P.A., today.

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