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When you receive medical treatment from a licensed physician, you assume you’ll get the quality of care that you bargained for. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Doctors can—and do—make life-threatening mistakes.
When medical malpractice, drug injuries, or elder abuse/negligence in a nursing home happens, you deserve to have someone on your side. Brien Roche Law will fight hard for your rights to get you the justice you deserve.
Medical malpractice occurs when a hospital, doctor, or other health care professional causes an injury to a patient through a negligent act or omission. To pursue a medical malpractice claim, you must generally prove two (2) things: substandard care and what did that substandard care then cause in terms of injury.
Here are some of the types of medical malpractice cases Brien Roche Law handles:
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Brien Roche has handled malpractice from professionals in trials. See why we’re the right choice for your malpractice case in Northern Virginia.
Malpractice comes in many forms besides medical. For example, your accountant could have done your taxes incorrectly which resulted in an expensive audit. Or the nursing home could have acted negligently when administering care to a loved one. At Brien Roche Law, we handle a wide variety of malpractice cases.
In a medical malpractice case, you need to be able to prove what the standard of care is, a breach of the standard of care, that the breach was a cause of damage and what those damages are. Typically the breach is proved through an expert witness in that same specialty. Likewise that witness may testify as to what the breach caused. You then need to prove what the actual damages are.
In a medical malpractice case, the damages typically fall into what is called “compensatory damages.” These damages are designed to compensate you for your loss. Those losses may be economic or non-economic:
When most people think of medical malpractice, they think of physicians doing harm. But anyone who provides health care services that harm or injure a patient can be held accountable. So nurses, therapists, and a host of other people involved in your care may qualify as health care providers.
This differs from state to state, but in Virginia, the time limit for malpractice cases typically is two years. There are several exceptions to that and as such, each case must be evaluated individually.
The goal of a medical malpractice claim is to seek compensation for your losses or damages. So the compensation you can recover should match your specific loss or damage.
If you lost income due to time off of work, you should be able to recover compensation for the lost wages. If you were injured and incurred medical care and bills to address the injury, you should be able to get compensation to cover those costs.
As indicated above, your damages in a medical malpractice case may be either economic or non-economic. Sometimes the economic losses are minor and the non-economic damages are the more compelling ones.
Many records can help bolster your claim, such as admission sheets, progress notes, doctor notes, records of therapy, medication records, and lab/imaging studies, to name a few.
It is based on the usage of the product. Or, it may also be based upon a failure to obtain informed consent. That is, the fact that the intended use of the medicine varies from the actual use may be malpractice.
If the drug is being used for a purpose not approved by the FDA, then the patient has a right to know that. The doctor’s failure to provide that information may be malpractice. How strong that claim is may be a function of how far the doctor strayed from the FDA-approved usage.
