Emergency Room Error Lawyers
Hospital emergency departments are often chaotic and overburdened with too many sick and hurt patients and too few professionals to treat them. Even if the ER is not busy, you might not receive the care you expect and deserve.
You could seek financial compensation if you believe you or a family member received poor emergency room care or died due to an ER error. A medical malpractice attorney could review your records and determine if you have a case for financial reimbursement.
If poor care harmed you or someone you love, an emergency room error lawyer could help you make it right. You could receive payments from the medical professionals and hospital involved in your treatment.
Common Emergency Room Errors
Many emergency room error claims involve improper patient assessment. Some examples of patient assessment errors include:
- Failing to establish a list of conditions that might be causing a patient’s symptoms
- Omitting necessary tests that might indicate a patient’s condition
- Not using all the information available to arrive at a diagnosis
- Misinterpreting test results
- Failing to address unexpected findings
- Premature release
- Neglecting to order or administer appropriate medication
Other common emergency room errors included failing to review the entire medical record, poor communication among healthcare providers in the ER, and excessive wait times for patients experiencing chest pains or unstable vital signs.
Any emergency room error could result in the patient not receiving life-saving treatment quickly enough. An emergency room misdiagnosis could cause a patient to receive ineffective or dangerous treatment. Sometimes ER mistakes result in significant, permanent injury or preventable death. A lawyer could assess whether the medical professionals in an emergency room adhered to the appropriate standard of care in his or her case.
Damages in Emergency Room Cases
An injured person could receive compensation for all the losses associated with an injury or condition that resulted from poor emergency room treatment. An attorney could help a patient calculate and document his or her losses.
Economic damages are losses with a fixed value, such as doctor visits, surgery, medications, hospital admissions, and similar costs. They also include wages lost from taking time off from work, future healthcare costs related to a condition, and reduced future income if a patient cannot return to his or her job.
Non-economic damages are losses that do not have an objective financial cost, including pain, mental suffering, disability, inconvenience, embarrassment, and other subjective impacts of the emergency room error. Ohio Revised Code 2323.43 limits the non-economic damages a patient could collect to three times the economic damages or $250,000, whichever amount is larger.
Do Not Delay a Legal Consultation
State law imposes strict time limits on lawsuits alleging medical negligence. In most cases, a patient must file a lawsuit against a medical professional within one year of an injury.
If a patient is not aware of an injury immediately, he or she could have more time to sue. In a misdiagnosis case, for example, it might take several months for a patient to receive a correct diagnosis and become aware of the emergency room error. Patients have one year after learning of a medical mistake to bring a lawsuit if they used reasonable diligence to discover it.
When patients do not file a suit within the law’s timeframe, a court will refuse to hear it. Although a lawyer could take steps in some cases to preserve the patient’s right to bring a lawsuit, seeking legal guidance as soon as an emergency room error is apparent is the best way to ensure access to the courts.
Rely on an Emergency Room Error Attorney to Pursue Your Case
You require prompt, capable care when you go to an emergency room. If poor medical treatment caused you to suffer losses, the hospital and medical professionals who treated you should pay. A Cleveland emergency room error lawyer could fight for you until you receive appropriate compensation. Call today to discuss your case with a knowledgeable legal representative.
