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Doctors sued by patients, insurance companies sued by doctors and doctors sued by insurance companies; nowadays, this is the prevailing situation in the Health care industry. Greater responsibility or the lack of it, rather than negligence is implicated by the word “malpractice”. In the US a specific medical malpractice law is in force to bring justice to the patients. In UK, a doctor will be liable only when proved to have not acted in accordance with the medical body’s opinion. In a lengthy and complicated battle, patients who feel that they are treated wrongly or given misinformation about illness can approach the law for compensation.
Every year, thousands of people are facing death due to medical errors which can be prevented with little bit of effort. Instead of reforming the medical system to prevent these pointless injuries and deaths, the rights of injured persons to get full recovery from the law is being limited by the efforts of insurance companies and doctors.
Even clinics, hospitals or medical corporations can be sued for the mistakes committed by their employees under “vicarious liability”. We associate the expression “medical malpractice” with doctors in general but in can be caused by any medical service provider such as nurses, therapists and dentists.
The patient who suffers damages due to medical malpractice should prove that the doctor or any other medical service provider failed to do what a prudent health care provider in a similar field would have done under similar or same circumstances. Because of this breach, the patient suffered damage or loss and fairly reasonably the defendant should pay for the damages caused by malpractice.
Medical malpractice claims are filed nearly ten times less frequently in Great Britain than they are in America. Compared to American patients, the British patients normally adopt a less adversarial stance towards medical malpractice.
It is mostly patients taking treatment through NHS that normally complain about not getting correct medical treatment, environment and building where healthcare is provided, lack of or incorrect information, inordinate delay and staff behaviour. These types of complaints should be lodged within six months from the time of treatment.
To end on a lighter note, a cancer victim who was told that he is expected to live only 3 more months, gave up his well paying job and prepared himself to face the impending death. (Un)fortunately, he outlived all the predictions and sued the hospital claiming compensation for the loss of his well paid job. A medical association spokesman found this astonishing and commented that people these days sue for anything!!
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First, lets make one thing clear, the vast majority of patients do not experience any form of Medical Malpractice. In fact the error rate seems to only be between 5 to 80 errors per 100,000 visits to medical practitioners. That not withstanding if you are one of those who become a victim of Medical Malpractice your error rate is 100%.
Diagnostic Errors are the single largest area of risk accounting for about one third of all Medical Malpractice claims. Don't forget this may not just be caused by a direct mistake by a doctor; it could be that the doctor is acting on incorrect information supplied by some other person, but it still results in an incorrect diagnoses.
Inadequate communication between various medical service providers was a major problem in producing claims, it is vital that doctors and other providers ensure that all relevant information is made available to avoid the risk of harm to the patient and prevent a suit for Medical Malpractice.
Incorrect record keeping was the cause of many errors, these errors seem to be have been spread pretty evenly across the various medical disciplines, so it seems that bad record keeping affects all areas of the medical profession just as it does so many areas of everyday life.
Errors in prescribing medication were found to be responsible for 19.4% of injuries according to a recent Harvard study, this hardly surprising when you consider that there is the potential to give incorrect dosage of a drug to somebody and also give the correct drugs to the wrong person!
It seems that most medical errors are not the result of any one person failing in their duty of care towards the patient, but more in basic errors, in the way the system is organised. Simple things that would never have happened if the system had more safe guards built in.
To few staff is the final major factor in producing medical errors, it is hardly surprising that errors are made when already tired staff are called on to perform extra duties. In a recent survey 50% of doctors and 70% of the public blamed overwork and tiredness as a major course of errors in the medical system.
The above list of potential courses of Medical Malpractice claims is not exclusive, but it does cover the main areas, most of these could be avoided it the Doctors, Nurses, Dentists and other practitioners took more care. But that means they need more time, and time costs money so we find ourselves back in the classic Catch 22 situation.