Have you or someone you know been the victim of doctor, nurse, or hospital error? Injuries due to medical error are all too common. However, you do not have to sit back and do nothing. If you have suffered because of a doctor’s negligence, there is professional help at Litster Frost. You have legal options and rights. Doctors carry medical malpractice insurance for such times as these.
- Bad Plastic Surgery – Vanity is not the only reason for plastic surgery, but if it turns out poorly, patients can suffer shame, hurt, or hopelessness. The emotional impact of bad surgery, along with medical and financial consequences can be devastating.
- Birth Injuries – A mishandled newborn can suffer common medical issues such as cerebral palsy, brain damage, paralysis, or Erb’s palsy. If this happens to your family, call an attorney immediately. You are entitled to compensation and negligent doctors must be held accountable.
- OBGYN Mistakes
- Delayed Diagnosis – Some illnesses, such as cancer, can progress past the point of possible recover if not diagnosed soon enough. Heart attack, stroke, meningitis and appendicitis or other infections also require timely diagnosis for proper treatment.
- Failure to Diagnose or Misdiagnosis – Often symptoms of one thing are indicative of another as well. This can prove fatal. If you are not getting better, or getting worse, seek another opinion. Your doctor may have missed something. You may be able to go back and sue for financial compensation.
- Fetal Death – Doctors are responsible to identify medical ailments and treat them, both for the safety of the mother and her fetus. If a medical professional fails to diagnose a problem, or administers the wrong treatment, or any other error, complications that threaten the life of her or her child. Take legal action and draw attention to dangerously careless medical professionals. While there is no amount of money that can ease the loss of a child, it may help ease your financial burden while you cope with your loss.
- Future Damages
- Hospital Staff Negligence – Nurses make errors and you should not have to suffer in their care. Also, if you suffer from being ignored too long, file a claim with the hospital and ask your attorney if you have grounds for a lawsuit.
- Medication Errors – If the wrong medication is prescribed it could cause a myriad of problems and even death. Double check with the pharmacist to make sure your medication matches your illness.
- Severe Dental Problems
- Surgical Injuries – If you are the sufferer of a botched surgery, wrong site surgery, misuse of surgical instruments, incorrect surgical procedure, or incorrect suturing, you are entitled to financial compensation. Furthermore, if surgeons left objects in your body, or you suffer post-surgical complications, call your attorney today.
- Anesthesia Errors – A potentially serious or deadly form of medical mistake involving improper administration of drugs during surgery or other invasive procedures.
- Medical negligence or errors leading to patient death.
While some pain and suffering is normal during treatment, and some disfigurement is to be expected after surgery, there are limits to allowable doctor error. If you are unsure if you are a victim of medical malpractice, call Litster Frost today and take control of your future.
Although medical malpractice suits can be difficult to prove and win, the numbers underscore the reality that Idaho has its share of injury and death due to this form of negligence. As can be seen in the anual infographic published by Diederich Healthcare, each year, millions of dollars are paid out in medical malpractice settlements or awards in Idaho.
Big settlements put high profile medical malpractice cases in the headlines on a regular basis. But we take everyday medical malpractice cases just as seriously. Afterall, you trust your doctor and medical professionals to take care of you, not cause you harm.
Litster Frost pursues medical malpractice cases both large and small in Boise and the rest of Idaho. We are interested in hearing about your situation if you have suffered due to medical errors or the negligence of a medical professional, hospital, or other medical care organization.
Representing You in An Idaho Medical Malpractice Case
Our first task as your attorneys are to determine if your doctor or other medical professionals who were responsible for your care failed to adhere to the standard that has been established for them nationally and here in Idaho. If so, we then need to determine how that failure contributed to your harm.
No medical professional will likely volunteer an admission of malpractice to you. So pursuing a case will take extensive investigation. This is true both initially while we design a strategy for your case as well as ongoing as we pursue a settlement or verdict. Nationally, the majority of medical malpractice cases that are tried to verdict are won by the hospitals or doctors since the burden of proof falls on the plaintiff and their attorneys. This is why we as so careful as your attorneys to both advise on when settlement or trial is best as well as to thoroughly research every avenue of fulfilling that burden of proof in a successful lawsuit.
Forms of Medical Malpractice Cases We Commonly See in Boise and Idaho
Delays or Misdiagnosis of Serious Conditions
A delay or misdiagnosis in serious conditions can lead to a lifelong injury or death. Some examples of such conditions where this can occur include:
- Cancer misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis
- Cardiovascular conditions, heart attack and/or stroke
- Emergency room diagnosis and treatments
- Hospital records or administration errors resulting in delayed diagnosis
- Birth injuries or prenatal issues causing harm to mother or baby
- Medical testing errors
Contributing To Harm Before or During Birth
As routine as childbirth is, many complications can arise. Despite modern practices, medication, training, and equipment, some of the injuries that befall mothers or their babies during pregnancy or delivery are still caused by doctor error. Learn more about this form of medical malpractice case on our birth injury page.
Misuse of Medical Equipment
While many lawsuits pertain to medical equipment defect or design, some cases of harm contributed to by equipment or medical devices are due to their misuse. This could be due to lack of training, misapplication, or many other factors pertaining to human error.
Surgical Errors
Roughly 4,000 people per year in the U.S. suffer from serious surgical mistakes. Researchers and medical industry people refer to these as “never events” as they are events that should never have happened. An example would be operating on the wrong patient or body part, or leaving a foreign object such as a sponge inside the operation site of the patient.
There are also many more less obvious surgical complications such as a failure to notice hemorrhaging. These can also be extremely serious.
Incorrect Prescription or Administering of Medicine
The process from prescribing a medication to administering it is complex and wrought with the potential for dangerous mistakes. Wrong drug for wrong patient, timing, dosage, manner of reconstitution, rate of infusion or speed of administration, wrong pharmaceutical form and many other factors have been cited in medication error related cases.
How Medical Mistakes Happen
The coordination needed between clerical and intake staff, administrative assistants,records and IT staff, nurses, doctors and interns, pharmacy and other responsible professionals in hospitals and medical clinics is very complex. With so many moving parts, a medical workflow can be very prone to contributing to oversites and errors. Add to that a breakdown in communication, a failure to follow procedure (which was likely enacted due to a medical mistake in the past), and other human errors, it’s no wonder that medical mistakes are common.
Computerization of medical records and patient management has helped. But no matter how sophisticated medical management systems, workflows, and procedures become, as long as they are managed by people, human error will be a factor in the equation.
Some have also cited a lack of qualified workforce in the medical community as leading to overworked, sometimes exhausted mistake prone situations. Even the most careful doctor or nurse who takes impeccable pride in their work can make mistakes when they are working double shifts with a lack of proper sleep.
Litster Frost’s Role
If you speak with an attorney at Litster Frost about your medical malpractice case, you’ll quickly realize why Idahoans trust our firm to handle their malpractice cases. You’ll realize that experience and deep knowledge of litigation for malpractice is critical. You’ll likely feel a stronger sense of security about the outcome of your case knowing that you have a team with sigificant resources facing off with the insurance companies and medical team’s attorneys whom you know also bring with them significant resources in their defense.
Talk to us about your case whether you are in Boise or elsewhere in the state. Depending on your situation, we’ll even travel to your location. Call us or fill out any of the forms on this site now to get started.
