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Medical Malpractice Lawyers Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog Four Things You Need to Prove Medical Malpractice
Request a Free ConsultationUpdated February 22, 2023 | By Wilson Kehoe Winingham staff
Medical malpractice and medical negligence occur when healthcare providers fail to do everything in their power to care for their patients. In order to qualify for legal action, whatever the provider did or didn’t do must also lead to an injury in the patient that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred.
If you suspect you or a loved one are a victim of medical malpractice, find an experienced medical malpractice attorney who can determine if your case qualifies for a medical malpractice lawsuit.
Failure to perform adequate treatment can take on different forms, depending on the nature of the illness and treatment:
Other examples of medical malpractice include surgical mistakes, diagnosis errors, and birth injuries.
In order to have a strong case of medical malpractice in Indiana, you need to prove these four things.
To sue for medical malpractice, an individual must have had an established, agreed-upon relationship with a physician or healthcare professional. Once that professional is officially the main source of treatment, they have a duty to treat patients with only the best standards of medical care.
However, where an individual might face difficulty is when the relationship begins and ends, especially if there’s a lot of time between injuries and treatment. The medical malpractice attorneys at WKW will be able to advise you on the strength of your case depending on the timeline.
Once it has been established that there was a relationship between physician and patient, the next step is to prove that they breached the expected standard of care. The injured party must prove, without a doubt, that a doctor caused a patient more harm than good, either with or without warning.
This typically requires expert testimony. In such situations, a medical malpractice lawyer would hire an expert witness from the same field of medicine to provide supporting evidence to a jury.
Simply being dissatisfied with a prognosis or a course of treatment is not always grounds for medical malpractice. Instead, focus on the following qualifying injuries:
These damages can be both economic and non-economic in nature.
A victim must be able to prove that the injury was the direct result of a doctor’s care or lack thereof. This is, unfortunately, quite difficult to prove. Since a plaintiff was often already injured or sick when they sought treatment, showing where one injury ends and another begins—let alone what caused it—can be daunting.
While expert testimony adds strength to a malpractice case, further research, documentation, medical records, and more is needed to show that the doctor’s action or inaction was the true cause of injury. Depending on the exact nature of the case, hiring multiple experts might be recommended by a malpractice attorney.
If you or a loved one have been injured as a result of medical negligence, contact the attorneys of Wilson Kehoe Winingham. An experienced Indianapolis medical malpractice lawyer at WKW can help you get the compensation you deserve. Call 317.920.6400 or fill out an online contact form for a free, no-obligation case evaluation.
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