Although some cases involving medical malpractice are obvious, such as removing the wrong limb or performing unnecessary procedures, some cases can be more ambiguous. It can hard to determine whether a doctor or hospital was negligent in the care you received that caused you, or your loved one, harm. However, if you hire an experienced medical malpractice attorney, they can help determine if you have a malpractice case.
Elements of Malpractice Cases
There are four elements that must be present to determine if you have a malpractice case. Your attorney must show:
- A relationship between you and the care provider
- How the provider’s care fell below the medical standard of care. By law, medical care that doesn’t meet the standard level of care may amount to medical negligence
- A connection between the medical provider’s negligence and the patient’s harm
- Damages to the patient that can be quantified
If these four elements exist, then a medical malpractice attorney will usually take your case and begin their investigation into what happened.
Proving Malpractice
In some cases, proving malpractice will be easy to do, but in others it can be more difficult and take months. However, most attorneys will not take your case unless they think they can win. Most malpractice attorneys will take your case on contingency, meaning you will not be charged for their services if you lose your case, but if you win, they will get a percentage of the award.
During the investigation of your case, the medical malpractice attorney you’ve hired will often have a medical expert help with proving malpractice. They will examine the care that you received, including all your treatments, prescriptions and any other care that you received at the provider’s behest. They will then compare it with the medical standard of care to help prove malpractice occurred.
