Utica Medical Malpractice

Located in the Mohawk Valley, Utica is the county seat of New York's Oneida County. It is the 10^th-most populous city in New York State. Primary health care in the city is provided by the Mohawk Valley Health Care System, which is a non-profit. When you go to a doctor, you trust that the doctor and their staff will do their best to diagnose and treat your medical problem. Unfortunately, inexcusable mistakes do happen, and sometimes these mistakes cause serious injuries or death. For many people, bringing a medical malpractice lawsuit is the only way that they can afford the additional medical care that is needed after a doctor, nurse, or other health care provider deviates from the standard of care and causes them harm. You should consult a Utica medical malpractice lawyer if you are in this challenging situation. At DeFrancisco & Falgiatano, we may be able to represent you.

Not every mistake made by a health care provider counts as malpractice. Plaintiffs trying to establish liability for medical malpractice need to prove that the defendant deviated from accepted community standards of practice, the deviation was a legal cause of the injuries, and it caused damages. Deviations from the professional standard of care could include failing to perform a differential diagnosis, failing to list the correct diagnosis as a possible diagnosis during a differential diagnosis, failing to conduct the proper tests to rule out a diagnosis, surgical errors, or providing improper treatment.

Doctors and other health care providers often try to get medical malpractice cases dismissed on summary judgment by arguing that the plaintiff has not established that the provider departed from accepted medical practices or alleging that the plaintiff was not injured by the departure.

Usually, a medical malpractice attorney in the Utica area will retain an expert even before bringing a lawsuit. The expert should be able to provide an opinion about what the professional standard of care was, whether the defendant departed from it, and whether the departure was the proximate cause of the plaintiff's injuries. The expert should usually be in the same field as the defendant. For example, a board-certified ob-gyn may serve as an expert in a case involving a claim that an ob-gyn failed to perform a C-section when appropriate, thereby causing birth injuries. Similarly, a board-certified oncologist might be appropriate to serve as an expert when another oncologist failed to diagnose breast cancer. An expert opinion needs to be based on facts in the record or personally known to the expert.

Another type of medical malpractice case is a lack of informed consent case. When it is a lack of informed consent case, a Utica medical malpractice attorney will need to show that a practitioner failed to reveal the risks, alternatives, and benefits of a treatment or procedure that a reasonable practitioner would have revealed, and a reasonable person in your position would have chosen not to undergo the treatment or procedure if they knew what you did not.

As with other types of medical malpractice cases, the defendant may try to get the case dismissed on summary judgment, and if it prevails, there will be no trial. For example, if a plaintiff claims that the defendant failed to warn of a risk that her bowels would be perforated, the defendant needs to show on summary judgment that the plaintiff had been told to consider the risk of bowel perforation as a reasonably foreseeable risk of the proposed procedure.

The damages available to a plaintiff who successfully establishes medical malpractice vary depending on the injuries suffered. Some common damages that are awarded include wage loss, medical expenses, mental anguish, and pain and suffering. Sometimes, when the injuries are catastrophic, other compensation may be necessary. For example, if a patient becomes paralyzed due to an anesthesia error, it might be appropriate to request the cost of a wheelchair and alterations to a house, such as the installation of a wheelchair ramp.

If you were harmed due to a doctor's failure to properly diagnose or treat you, you may have a basis to bring a medical malpractice lawsuit for compensation. Our firm provides aggressive representation to injured patients and their families. Call us at 833-200-2000 or contact us via our online form.