Should a claim always be made when medical malpractice occurs? Malpractice happens a lot in doctor's offices and hospitals. I get calls about it almost every week. Various government agencies estimate that many thousands of people die every year due to medical carelessness. Yet, a serious analysis has to occur before anyone should make a claim for it.
The first question is: can I prove that malpractice occurred? This is not as simple as it might seem. A bad result might indicate that malpractice was involved, but it doesn't necessarily indicate that it was. Doctors aren't guarantors of perfect care, just reasonable care under the circumstances. For a jury to find that a doctor was guilty of malpractice, it must decide that the doctor deviated from an acceptable level of care which is more or less defined as a range of care within which other practitioners of the same kind would have performed under the circumstances. Assuming that malpractice can be established using that definition, the second question is: Did the malpractice cause damage to the patient, or was the bad result caused by something else like, for instance, an infection or disease that was simply incurable even though the doctor tried.
If the malpractice was the legal cause of the damage, the third and final question in the analysis is this. Is the damage so bad that it warrants your making a claim against the doctor or hospital? It's important for you to have that question answered before you make the claim, because malpractice cases are expensive to investigate, prepare, and try. Be as sure as you can that the end result in a case will be worth your time and effort after the expenses of the case are deducted from a court award.
If all 3 questions can be answered in the positive, the case should proceed, because you should be compensated, and malpractice claims serve as a deterrent to further malpractice. You might save someone else from the same experience. On the other hand, if even one of the questions is answered with a "no," you would be wise to walk away and just be happy that you are alive.
