How are medical malpractice cases defended in Georgia?
Clients often ask, “how are medical malpractice cases defended?” That is a great question.
How common is medical malpractice?
First and foremost, it is important to recognize that medical malpractice is real. Most people have had very positive experiences with their healthcare providers. That is wonderful and exactly what anyone would want. But nurses and doctors are people. People make mistakes. That is why medical errors happen, and patients get hurt unnecessarily. Medical errors are so common that it is considered the third leading cause of death in the United States, according to the BMJ.
How serious is medical malpractice?
Medical malpractice can cause serious and fatal injuries. The most serious medical malpractice cases involve situations where people have died or suffered disastrous permanent injuries like brain damage, paralysis, or amputations. Here are the most common types of medical malpractice cases we see in the medical malpractice field.
What should happen after medical malpractice kills or injures someone?
When medical malpractice causes death or serious injuries, you can imagine that doctors and multi-million dollar hospital systems become more concerned about their financial exposure than doing the right thing. Doing the right thing means following their own hospital policies and professional standards to disclose medical errors to patients and families truthfully, transparently, and promptly. But this does not happen. It is rare for these disclosures to happen even when they are ethically mandated by many organizations like the American Medical Association and the Joint Commission.
What do hospitals and doctors do after a medical malpractice event?
Instead, hospitals, doctors, and their insurance companies adopt a “deny-and-defend approach.” Instead of providing full disclosure to the patient and family, they give vague descriptions about what happened like the patient died because their heart stopped. But everyone’s heart stops when they die. They only partially disclose what they know instead of completely disclosing what actually happened like we made a medication error, we could not find the doctor during the emergency, or the anesthesiologist was not ready for the difficult airway. This is further exacerbated by the fact that they do not write in medical records what actually happened. The medical records are also vague and incomplete, leaving patients and families to wonder what actually happened to cause the unexpected death or injury.
How do hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and their lawyers defend medical malpractice cases?
Hospitals, doctors, their insurance companies, and their defense lawyers usually adopt a “deny-and-defend” strategy. Here’s the top ten list of how to defend medical malpractice cases:
- Withhold information about what really happened from the patient and family.
- Make up alternative theories about the cause of the injury or death to avoid responsibility.
- Get risk managers to interview all the witnesses and suggest a whitewashed story to tell the patient or family.
- Hire experienced and aggressive medical malpractice defense lawyers to help hide the actual facts of what happened.
- Hide and/or withhold information and documents during a lawsuit so it is hard for patients and patient lawyers to figure out what actually happened.
- Coach nurses and doctors to give evasive answers in their depositions by saying “not necessarily” and “it depends” or conveniently “I can’t remember“.
- Hire expert witnesses who will say anything to defend hospitals and doctors and who never advocate for a patient even when there is a legitimate malpractice case.
- Protract and extend the litigation hoping that the families will give up or will take pennies on the dollar or wait for the injured patient to die so that the case is less valuable.
- Blame the patient by arguing the patient is at fault for their medical conditions or to argue that their injury or death is not valuable.
- Get aggressive medical malpractice defense lawyers to confuse the jury about proper medical care; sell baseless theories to a jury like “it was a judgment call” even when it was patently bad judgment; argue “it was a known complication” when that known complication should have been prevented and avoided; or argue that some alternative cause killed or injured the patient, completely disregarding the malpractice that caused or contributed to the poor outcome.
What should you do?
If you or a family member or friend have suffered serious injuries or have been killed due to medical malpractice in Georgia, it is imperative that you find the most skilled medical malpractice lawyers in Georgia you can find. The medical negligence attorneys at The Moses Firm specialize in medical malpractice cases and have decades of experience and expertise to help you with your case. Just as not all doctors are the same, not all lawyers are the same. We could not be prouder of our reputation and the results we have obtained for our clients. If you need help, contact the Atlanta medical malpractice lawyers at The Moses Firm for a free consultation.
