Every year there are more deaths across America chalked up to medical errors. This is when a health care professional doesn’t offer the patient quality care, and injuries or death may result.
Medical malpractice/medical errors don’t just happen in the hospital, although this is the association that many people have when they think about this term. In addition, it’s not just physicians that may make the errors. Those who may make an error in medical management include surgeons, dentists, nurses, hospital workers, eye doctors and general practitioners.
If you have questions about the statistics, then make it a point to check out the Journal of the American Medical Association. One of their most notable articles indicates that roughly 12,000 deaths happen yearly thanks to unnecessary surgery. Close to 7,000 fatalities were the result of medication errors in hospital and nearly 20,000 deaths were the end result of other errors in a hospital setting. The dollar amount that goes along with these errors is astronomical.
You may be wondering what kinds of errors happen in a hospital setting besides medication errors, which typically leads the list of mistakes. In fact, a recent study done by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies shows that at least 1.5 million people a year are harmed as a result of errors in medication.
There are actually a large number of things that may go wrong in a hospital, including surgical errors, medical experimentation, anesthesia errors, birth errors, misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis, wrongful death, and failing to take the correct medical action deemed appropriate. This is just the tip of the medical error iceberg too.
If you’ve been the victim of a medical error, you may stand to lose your job, lose wages, perhaps suffer a permanent disability which may affect the quality of your life, loss of future income, ever increasing medical bills, chronic pain and much more. These are also some of the things you may be able to seek compensation for when you speak to a qualified medical malpractice lawyer.
An experienced med mal attorney will strive to ensure you recover appropriate compensation for the various losses we have discussed in this article.
Tim Anderson works with Atlanta Personal Injury attorney, Stephen M. Ozcomert. The firm specializes in personal injury, malpractice, motorcycle accidents, and wrongful death. To learn more about Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Stephen M. Ozcomert or Atlanta personal injury, Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Atlanta personal injury attorney, visit Ozcomert.com.