Massena Memorial Hospital

Massena Memorial Hospital is located in St. Lawrence County, New York. It is a 50-bed facility. Services it offers include labor and delivery, MRI, ambulatory surgery, cardiology services, emergency department, nuclear medicine, intensive care, endoscopy, pediatrics, laboratory, and more. If you believe you have been harmed by professional negligence at a facility like this, the seasoned Massena medical malpractice attorneys of DeFrancisco & Falgiatano can potentially help you assert your rights.

You have only 2 ½ years after an act or omission that you believe constitutes medical malpractice in order to sue for medical malpractice. When ordinary negligence is alleged, you have three years to sue. Medical malpractice occurs when there is professional negligence; there must be a doctor-patient relationship for a mistake or error made by a health care provider to constitute medical malpractice. When there is no such relationship, a medical malpractice claim cannot be pursued. For example, in most cases, lab errors will be considered under the rules of ordinary negligence, not medical malpractice, though some lab errors may constitute medical malpractice.

To prove medical malpractice, you’ll need to prove: (1) a doctor-patient relationship, (2) breach of the professional duty of care applicable under the circumstances, (3) causation, and (4) damages. A knowledgeable medical malpractice lawyer in Massena can help you determine whether the facts of your case will fulfill these elements. For example, there is a doctor-patient relationship between a laboring mother and her OB-GYN, and if there is a failure to abide by the professional standard of care while delivering the baby, such that the mother and baby are seriously injured, it may be possible to recover damages for medical malpractice and birth injuries.

Not every mistake made by a doctor or nurse constitutes medical malpractice. Some common mistakes include failure to diagnose, failure to treat, inappropriate treatment, misdiagnosis, surgical errors, and post-operative errors. A different standard of care may apply depending on the individual characteristics of the patient, but also based on the type of doctor. For example, what a family care doctor may be expected to do when confronted with cervical pain may be different than what an oncologist should do. Sometimes errors are made during the differential diagnosis process.

Doctors use differential diagnosis as a means to identify a disease or condition in a patient. When the patient is initially evaluated, the doctor makes a list of diagnoses in order of how probable they are. The doctor tests the strength of the diagnosis by making additional medical observations of the patient, asking specific questions about symptoms and medical history, ordering tests or referring the patient to specialists. As diagnoses are tested and investigated, they will be eliminated such that only one diagnosis remains at the end. Sometimes after investigating further, a doctor finds other information that causes her differential diagnostic list to expand.

When a medical malpractice lawsuit arises based on a diagnostic error, the patient will need to show that a doctor practicing in the same specialty under similar conditions wouldn’t have misdiagnosed or failed to diagnose the condition at issue. Generally, he will have to show: (1) the correct diagnosis wasn’t on the list of potential diagnoses when a reasonably competent doctor would have listed it under the circumstances or (2) the correct diagnosis was listed but appropriate tests were not conducted to investigate whether that was the diagnosis. A Massena medical malpractice lawyer can help you put forward a claim of this nature.

Before suing for hospital or medical malpractice, you need to retain an expert to go over your medical records and the facts. You will need to file a certificate of merit under the New York Civil Practice Law and Rules section 3012-a.

If you can establish liability, it may be possible to recover compensatory damages that are designed to make you whole or put you back in the position you would’ve been in had there been no malpractice. Compensatory damages can include both economic and noneconomic losses.

If you were harmed by a health care provider’s malpractice at a facility such as Massena Memorial Hospital, it is advisable to consult a skilled medical malpractice lawyer. DeFrancisco & Falgiatano represents injured patients and their families in Massena and the surrounding communities. Please call us at 833-200-2000 or contact us via our online form.