The Lewis County General Hospital is over 80 years old. Its main campus is made up of more than 220,000 square feet of floor space. It is a Critical Access Hospital with 25 beds, and it has a nursing home facility with 160 beds. You might assume that if you have a medical problem, and you visit the hospital for it, you will receive a trustworthy diagnosis and treatment. However, doctors and medical staff make mistakes, and sometimes these mistakes have serious consequences. If you suspect that you were a victim of medical malpractice at Lewis County General Hospital, you should consult the Lewis County medical malpractice lawyers at DeFrancisco & Falgiatano. It is important to talk to an experienced attorney about whether you have a viable claim.
Bringing a Claim Against Lewis County General HospitalMedical malpractice can occur in many ways. It may include a failure to diagnose, monitor, or treat. A failure to diagnose at a hospital may be a result of a failure to list a potential diagnosis on a differential diagnosis. However, it could also be a result of a failure to adequately test a diagnosis, or mistakes made during the laboratory testing process or breakdowns in communication. For example, if a doctor fails to biopsy a tumor, this could result in a delay in diagnosing cancer that causes serious harm or even death. For another example, a surgeon's amputation of the wrong limb as a result of an improper notation in the medical records could cause significant harm. Failure to obtain informed consent, failure to perform a C-section, and surgical errors are other mistakes that could give rise to a medical malpractice lawsuit.
If you are seeking damages for medical malpractice at Lewis County General Hospital, a medical malpractice attorney in Lewis County will need to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that there was a doctor-patient relationship giving rise to a professional duty of care owed by the defendant, as well as the defendant's breach of the professional standard of care, causation, and actual damages. The standard of preponderance of the evidence applies, under which the plaintiff must be able to show that events happened more likely than not as they are claiming.
In most cases, we will need to hire an expert witness before suing. The expert witness is usually board-certified in the same area that the defendant practices. For example, if there is a birth injury case, we may hire an expert doctor who is board-certified as an OB-gyn. If there is a failure to diagnose cancer case, we may retain a board-certified oncologist as an expert. However, some circumstances do not require an expert. When there is a never event, such as an amputation of the wrong limb, the jury would not need expert testimony to understand that the doctor violated the professional standard of care.
Lewis County medical malpractice attorneys will use experts to provide opinions about what the professional standard of care was, whether it was breached, and causation. The accepted practices and standards of the medical community make up the professional standard of care. However, the details of this standard may vary significantly, depending on a patient's characteristics, the symptoms reported to the doctor, the doctor's specialty, and the geographic region.
In some cases, the malpractice occurs before a procedure. A doctor's failure to obtain informed consent is malpractice. Doctors must give their patients advice about the risks associated with an operation or procedure. When they fail to provide this information, the patient cannot give informed consent. If one of the undisclosed risks occurs and harms you, you may have a basis to sue for damages in a medical malpractice lawsuit based on lack of informed consent. You will need to prove that you would not have undergone the operation or procedure if you had known about the undisclosed risk.
Hire a Medical Malpractice Lawyer in Lewis CountyIf you have been harmed due to medical malpractice at Lewis County General Hospital, our law firm may be able to help you recover damages from the responsible parties. DeFrancisco & Falgiatano represents injured patients in many areas of Upstate New York. Call us at 833-200-2000 or contact us via our online form.