Medical Malpractice

Recently in Illinois, an infant was rushed to an emergency room by his parents for incessant crying and vomiting that prevented him from nursing. The emergency room physician diagnosed the infant with a gastrointestinal colic and sent the family house with instructions on how to cope with the colic. The next day, the infant suffered a painful death, due to a rare heart defect that the physician could have discovered by ordering a regular chest x-ray. When the infant’s parents hired Chicago medical malpractice lawyers and sued both the hospital and the emergency room physician, a jury discovered both defendants liable for ,250,000.

Multi-million dollar medical malpractice verdicts beg the question of how juries arrive at such numbers. What is the just measure of punishment for a doctor’s error that can adequately compensate the loss of grieving parents? Certainly no quantity of income could ever compensate parents or make them whole after the loss of a child. Even if such a number could be reached, is it genuinely fair to make doctors liable?

In each profession or line of work, individuals, even licensed experts, make errors. Regrettably for medical experts, every single day mistakes can lead to medical malpractice lawsuits involving unfathomable tragedies such as brain harm, birth injuries, quadriplegia, amputations, and death.

The Illinois legal system has guidelines for striking the most appropriate balance between protecting both patients and doctors by way of (1) restrictions on filing instances, (2) caps on certain kinds of damages, and (three) comparative negligence testing.

Filing an Illinois Medical Malpractice Lawsuit

An Illinois medical malpractice lawsuit, in most instances, needs to be filed inside a 2 year statute of limitations period from the date that malpractice could have been reasonably discovered, but no a lot more than four years from the date of treatment. This indicates that some patients are given a slightly extended period of time soon after medical treatment until they reasonably discover medical malpractice.

For instance, when a woman undergoes surgery to avoid future pregnancies and winds up pregnant 3 years later, she still has 1 year to file a lawsuit, due to the fact she could not have reasonably discovered the malpractice until she became pregnant three years right after surgery. In spite of the extension given for the discovery of malpractice, all circumstances are subject to a four year limitation. Thus, if the woman became pregnant 5 years later, she would no longer be able to file a medical malpractice lawsuit.

The Illinois medical malpractice statute of limitations exists to protect doctors against stale claims. As time passes, it becomes increasingly difficult to formulate a defense against acts committed in the past. Furthermore, the statute of limitations exists so that doctors are not forced to worry about their errors for an unlimited amount of time. The statute of limitations can be longer in circumstances involving minors or shorter against government entities.

Once it is established that a case satisfies the statute of limitations, a lawsuit can only be filed if a patient’s medical malpractice lawyer finds an professional who is willing to testify about a breach of regular care.

In every single medical malpractice lawsuit, the overarching question is regardless of whether a doctor breached the regular of care in his or her field of practice. Regular care requirements are diverse for every single area of medicine so medical malpractice professional witnesses ought to be doctors who practice in the area of medicine involved in a particular lawsuit. In order to show that there has been a breach of the standard care in a medical field, there must be an professional witness who is willing to testify for the plaintiff and say that the physician in question failed to meet the standard of care requirements in the industry. With out expert testimony, medical malpractice cases cannot even be filed.

Illinois Medical Malpractice Damages

There are 3 types of damages that are normally available in Illinois law: economic damages, non-economic damages and punitive damages. As the name suggests, punitive damages are utilised as a form of punishment, and are not offered in medical malpractice. The reasoning behind no punitive damages is that medical malpractice is a form of negligence, which is a non-intentional tort that society usually does not punish.

Economic damages incorporate all of the medical bills and expenses that arise from malpractice, which can range from hospital bills, prescriptions and transportation expenses involved. There are no caps, or limitations to the amount of medical malpractice economic damages that juries can award. Anything that a patient is billed for as a result of malpractice is an economic damage that doctors and hospitals are liable for.

Non-economic damages involve payment for all of the intangible expenses that patents endure, such as discomfort and suffering or even loss of relationships. As of August of 2005, non-economic damages are limited to ,000.00 against individual doctors and ,000,000.00 against hospitals. Thus, an Illinois jury’s decision for the total amount of damages owed to a patient is limited to the medical expenses associated with the malpractice, plus a maximum of .5 million for non-economic damages.

Comparative Negligence in Illinois Medical Malpractice

As soon as a conclusion is reached for the quantity of damages that had been incurred by a patient, juries are asked to deduct from those damages a percentage of the patient’s own comparative fault. Damages can be deducted as far as 50%, but when a patient’s fault is recognized as far more than half, damages for the plaintiff are removed entirely.

The 50/50 comparative negligence test in Illinois only enables medical malpractice recovery against doctors when patients are 50% or much less at fault. For example, if a patient is released from a hospital, and instructed by a physician not to drive for 1 week whilst on antibiotics, but ignores the instructions, crashes a vehicle and is severely injured, a jury would most likely find that even though the antibiotic could have caused the accident, the patient was more than 50% at fault for ignoring the doctor’s instructions, and thus barred from recovery against the physician who ordered the prescription.

On the other hand, in closer cases, juries can determine that patients are much less than 50% at fault. In a recent case, a patient was rushed to a hospital for severe allergies that were aggravated by his smoking habits. The patient died when doctors administered a food supplement by way of his feeding tube that contained milk, which he was also allergic to. The jury discovered that the patient was 38% at fault, due to the fact it was his smoking that contributed to the patient’s weakened condition that led to his death. Simply because the patient was less than 50% at fault, doctors were responsible for paying the patient’s estate according to their share of the blame, which was 62%.

The calculation of damages, and comparative negligence along with restrictions such as the statute of limitations and requirements of expert testimony regarding standard care assists juries arrive at fair verdicts in incredibly hard cases. The downside to the very involved process is that it outcomes in long lawsuits that can last for years and involve pricey legal fees. Nevertheless, the Illinois legal system strives to strike an suitable balance between protecting both patients and doctors.