Medical Malpractice cases occur when health care providers – doctors, surgeons, nurses, dentists and pharmacists – harm their patients. These injuries can include misdiagnosis, surgical errors or medication mistakes at Fresno, Clovis and Madera clinics and hospitals. Using the medical records obtained from your Fresno Malpractice Case Review, our lawyers will investigate the doctor that harmed you. We will look for prior malpractice actions, complaints, or settlements. We will also research the hospital or facility where they work. This will help us determine if the doctor is on probation or has been disciplined by the California State Medical Board.
Most physicians are independent contractors, so the hospitals they work for cannot be held liable for their malpractice. However, nurses and other hospital staff may be.
1. Medical Records
Medical records play an essential role in a patient’s care, serving as comprehensive documentation of diagnoses, treatment outcomes, and research findings. Reviewing these records demands thorough examination, ensuring accuracy and quality. Achieving this entails a series of key steps.
One of the most crucial factors is obtaining complete medical records from all hospitals and doctors involved in the case. This includes requesting any additional documents pertaining to the plaintiff such as surgical records and imaging results.
Another step is arranging these records systematically to facilitate their analysis. This often involves dividing medical records into categories such as diagnostic or treatment notes. In addition, it involves analyzing the data for consistency and checking to ensure that different sections of the medical record match each other. For example, medication lists should align with treatment notes and discharge summaries must reflect accurate final diagnoses. This can be accomplished with the use of sophisticated software programs that employ Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms.
2. Doctor’s Reports
We have to prove that you owed the doctor a duty of care and that through their negligence or intentional acts, this was breached. We must also show that this breach directly led to the injury you suffered.
The most common types of medical negligence cases we handle in Fresno include misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis. Other medical errors we see are surgical mistakes, medication mistakes, child delivery mistakes, overnight monitoring negligence that allows patient health to destabilize unnecessarily, and more. These errors can lead to serious and life-altering injuries. Moreover, they deviate drastically from the prevailing professional standards of care.
3. Expert Witness Testimony
Expert witness testimony is a vital element in many legal cases. For example, a forensic DNA analyst’s insights can be the difference between implicating a suspect and exonerating an innocent one. In medical malpractice lawsuits, expert witnesses explain whether a physician’s actions align with the prevailing standards of medical practice.
A good expert will have a robust educational background and professional experience in the relevant field. They will also have a track record of publishing research. Both plaintiffs and defendants rely on these experts to establish causation, quantify damages, and shape the trajectory of the case.
The key task for these professionals is to determine the expected standard of care in the given situation and then compare the defendant’s actions to those standards. This process helps a jury understand what the doctor could have done in similar circumstances and what they failed to do. This enables the jury to decide whether the defendant was negligent.
4. Video Recordings
In nearly every hospital, clinic and professional building there are video cameras recording the daily activities. In many cases, these videos are the most crucial evidence in a medical malpractice case and can be very difficult to obtain.
In addition, many of these video recordings are overwritten in a short time period so that they must be obtained as soon as possible. Our Fresno medical malpractice lawyers know how to get access to the video evidence that can make or break a claim.
Community Health System has agreed to pay $31.5 million to resolve False Claims Act claims involving the company’s payment of kickbacks to referring physicians, acting U.S. Attorney Michele Beckwith announced today. The settlement includes the resolution of a qui tam or whistleblower lawsuit filed by former employee Michael Terpening. The complaint alleges that the company violated the False Claims Act by paying kickbacks to referring physicians in order to generate referrals for its hospitals.