Hospitals can be legally responsible for serious injuries and wrongful death, just as doctors or nursing homes or labs or other health care providers can be. When an employee of the hospital hurts a patient by treating or dealing with that patient in a negligent way, then the hospital itself can be held legally responsible under state law. This includes doctors, nurses, technicians, and even paramedics, as well as other hospital staff.
And hospital malpractice – where patients are hurt while they are already sick or injured seriously enough to require hospital care – happens all the time. You and your loved ones need to be aware of this sad American reality.
Consider the following events that are currently making the national news as examples or warnings to us all:
1. Baby Dies After Delivery.
This month, a mother filed a Illinois wrongful death lawsuit against two Northshore University HealthSystem hospital doctors along with one of their nurses because of her baby daughter Emma’s tragic death. According to the Cook County Circuit Court records, Bianca Hernandez is asserting that medical malpractice during the delivery of her baby daughter at the hospital caused her baby to die.
2. Hepatitis C Outbreak After Syringe Re-used.
In Massachusetts, a hospital is being sued for malpractice and the state attorney general is investigating criminal action after a hepatitis C outbreak happened at Exeter Hospital. Twenty people have been reported to suffer from hepatitis C since the public health investigation began last month, and right now it’s being suggested that the reason all these people now have this serious, life-threatening disease that attacks the liver is because someone at the hospital used a syringe meant for one person on other people (re-used it).
3. Patient Falls Off Table After Surgery.
In Connecticut, an elderly woman is suing her hospital for damages after she sustained serious injuries from a fall off the operating table just after she had had surgery. The 81-year-old patient is suing Yale-New Haven Hospital for fractures to her hip and collarbone and a traumatic brain injury where she bled under her skull – in addition to other injuries – after her surgery to implant a pacemaker.
4. Record-Making Jury Verdict After Series of Errors Results in Permanent Brain Damage.
In New York last month, a jury came back with a verdict of $120,000,000 in a lawsuit filed by a daughter on behalf of her incapacitated mother after her mom suffered permanent brain damage after a series of visits to two hospitals, Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn and Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx. It is the largest medical malpractice verdict in New York and in addition to the two hospitals, Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, and one of Brookdale’s neurologists have also been included in the liability determination by the jury. It seems that over a period of several weeks but less than one month’s time, the victim not only suffered from a mishandling of her meds, but she didn’t get treatments that were needed and providers didn’t respond quickly to crises that she experienced.
