Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center

Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center is a private not-for-profit community hospital in St. Lawrence County. It has 115 beds, including 67 beds for acute care and 28 beds for a mental health center. When you come to a community hospital with a medical problem or malady, you trust that the health care providers there will provide competent medical diagnoses and treatment. Unfortunately, doctors and other providers do make serious mistakes, and these mistakes can have devastating consequences. If you believe that you may have been a victim of medical malpractice at Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center, you should consult the St. Lawrence County medical malpractice lawyers at DeFrancisco & Falgiatano.

Not every mistake counts as medical malpractice. To show medical malpractice, your attorney will need to establish a professional duty of care, a breach of the professional duty of care, actual and proximate causation, and actual damages. Breaches of the professional duty of care happen in many different ways. They depend not only on the type of health care provider that the defendant is but also on other specific circumstances, such as the patient's personal health history, family history, age, gender, and other factors.

The specific situation giving rise to litigation matters too. For example, a patient who does not disclose symptoms that would have allowed a doctor to make an appropriate diagnosis may not be able to show a breach of the professional duty of care. The breach of the professional duty of care can be based on a health care provider's failure to take a family history, a failure to list a possible diagnosis on a differential diagnosis list, a failure to test each of the diagnoses listed, a failure to conduct tests properly, a failure to interpret the results of tests appropriately, or a failure to properly communicate test results to a patient. Sometimes there is a failure to properly or timely refer a patient to a specialist. For example, in many cases, a physician faced with test results that indicate a cancerous tumor should probably refer a patient to a specialist for further medical care. In some instances, a failure to abide by the professional duty of care involves a failure to provide the right treatment or a failure to provide treatment at all.

Causation can be challenging to prove. If the same outcome would have occurred regardless of the health care providers' actions, you will not be able to recover damages. In most cases, a jury cannot make a decision about causation without expert testimony. We usually need to consult with an expert doctor or other provider prior to a medical malpractice case being filed to make sure that we are in compliance with the requirement that we file a written certificate of merit along with the lawsuit. The certificate of merit will attest that the patient's lawyer reviewed the facts, consulted with a licensed doctor, and decided on the basis of that consultation that there was a reasonable basis for filing a medical malpractice lawsuit or that they could not comply with this requirement after making three good-faith attempts to consult with three separate doctors.

If we are able to establish liability in your medical malpractice case, we may be able to recover damages on your behalf. These may include economic and noneconomic losses. Economic losses may include wage loss, medical bills, replacement services like household services, medical equipment, medication, and other tangible and documented losses. Noneconomic losses may include pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of consortium, and lost earning capacity.

Sometimes medical malpractice results in the wrongful death of a loved one. New York's statute of limitations to file a lawsuit for wrongful death is two years from the decedent's death. In order to recover damages for wrongful death, you will need to prove pecuniary losses. For example, if you are the spouse of someone who contributed income to the household, you may be able to recover lost wages.

If you have been injured because of medical malpractice during the diagnostic process, surgery, or a course of treatment at Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center, our law firm may be able to help you recover damages from responsible parties. DeFrancisco & Falgiatano represents injured patients throughout St. Lawrence County, as well as in Syracuse, Rochester, Binghamton, Auburn, Elmira, Norwich, Cortland, Delhi, Herkimer, Watertown, Lowville, Oneida, Wampsville, Utica, Canandaigua, Oswego, Cooperstown, Ithaca, and Lyons. Call us at 833-200-2000 or contact us via our online form.