If you plan on speaking to an attorney about filing a medical malpractice claim, you should understand some of the basic concepts that define what malpractice is from a legal standpoint. Medical malpractice refers to a situation where a professional – malpractice law also applies to professionals other than doctors – is found to have performed their duties in a way that was negligent, immoral or incompetent. Taking a look at some common situations, you may be able to determine whether or not malpractice played a part in how you came to be injured by a physician.

Cause

In order to have a valid malpractice claim, the doctor’s malpractice actually has to have been the cause of any injuries that you sustained. This can be difficult to establish, which is why medical malpractice attorneys have access to experts who can help sort through a situation and find out whether or not malpractice was, in fact, the reason a given client suffered some sort of injury. There are conditions and diseases that, no matter how skillful a doctor is, will injure and maim. In situations where the doctor did their very best and where they delivered the most professional care possible, they are likely not liable to be sued for malpractice.

It can take a long time for a medical negligence case involving an injured baby to work its way through the courts. Unfortunately, there isn’t much time after one of these incidents occurs to actually file the lawsuit. That means that parents have to be working quickly when they feel that negligence caused their child’s birth injuries. Attorneys will generally meet with such parents for free, so there is no reason to delay. These are things to look at when you’re wondering whether or not filing a medical negligence claim is merited.

Delayed Care

Many of the claims filed over birth injuries involve mothers who did not receive care when it was needed. Many of those claims also involved delayed C-sections that may have saved the child from injury if they’d been given in time.

Hulk Hogan is likely one of the most well-known wrestlers in the world. Like many people in athletics, he has, over the course of his career, suffered some grievous injuries to his body as a result of how he makes his paychecks. According to Cageside Seats, Hulk Hogan is filing a lawsuit against a Tampa Bay medical facility that performed procedures on his back.

This may seem like light reading to anybody considering a medical malpractice claim, but there is a lot in this claim that reveals why many medical malpractice claims are filed.

Loss of Work

According to the lawsuit, the wrestler endured procedures that were recommended by staff at the clinic he is suing that did him no good. He also claims that the procedures further destabilized his back, according to the reports. Because of this, the lawsuit alleges that Hogan did not receive proper treatment in a timely manner and that affected his ability to do his job, which is wrestling in a ring for this particular individual.

Medical malpractice comes in many different forms. The key thing to keep in mind if you suspect that you may have been a victim of medical malpractice is that the doctor will have to have breached their duty to you as a patient in some regard. There are many ways that this can happen. Some of the most common ways follow.

According to a study of the National Practitioner Data Bank, approximately 1/2 of medical malpractice payments are awarded to patients who received care outside of a hospital. While the common perception of medical malpractice may involve a botched surgery or negligent care delivered in an emergency room or hospital, this study shows that a clinic, urgent care facility or other healthcare provider facility is also a place where patients are at risk for being victims of medical negligence.

Outpatient Care

Sometimes, doctors do things that seem like they could be medical malpractice but which are not. You have to be aware of this if you're considering filing a lawsuit for medical malpractice. You should speak with an attorney to be sure, but be aware of the following things that are not malpractice.

1: Rudeness

Doctors and nurses are oftentimes very busy. Sometimes they're not exactly the warmest people on Earth. This is called bedside manner and not all doctors excel at coming off as compassionate or even interested in your wellbeing. As long as they give you proper care and hold up their duties to you as a physician, they're not being negligent. In fact, sometimes, doctors and nurses need to be a bit rude. They're trying to help and some patients make it hard.

Medical malpractice sometimes takes the form of doctors handing out the wrong medications to treat a condition. There are also cases, however, where there are other factors to consider that may involve suing someone other than the doctor themselves. Here are some things to keep in mind.

Was it the Wrong Drug or a Dangerous Drug?

If a physician gave you the wrong drug and it caused you harm, it might be a case of medical negligence. If the drug itself was dangerous, however, you may be looking at a potential dangerous drug case. There are some drugs that have gotten onto the market that proved to be very dangerous after having been used for a long time. If you've been treated with such a drug, it may not be the doctor's fault.

Filing a medical malpractice claim can be intimidating. After all, you're going up against experts in the healthcare field and, as anyone who's ever dealt with such professionals understands, they can oftentimes make you feel like your opinion isn't worth much compared to theirs. Where negligence is concerned, however, the issue is not medical expertise. Negligence has to do with living up to the reasonable expectations placed upon people in given situations.

To understand the basics of medical malpractice, it's useful to break it down to its most easily understood elements.

• A doctor took you on as a patient
• The doctor did not live up to their duty to you as your physician
• You were harmed

For most medical malpractice claims, this is the most basic way to understand the sequence of events. When a physician takes you on as a patient, they take on a duty to provide you with competent medical care. Understand that competent is not the same thing as effective. There are instances where patients show up and where they are given top-notch medical care but where their conditions have gone so far that there is no going back and where the patient ends up either suffering or actually dies as a result of their disease or their injuries. Sometimes, even the best physicians in the world can do nothing to stop this.

Sometimes, it's difficult to find good medical negligence information. Attorneys are always that best sources for this information and, for that reason, you should restrict your sources of information to your attorney if you're filing a medical malpractice claim. This ensures that you don't end up getting confused by contrary information and by information that's put out by advocacy or political groups of one type or another. Believe it or not, being able to sue over doctor malpractice is actually a contentious issue politically, so there is definitely some information out there that's going to do you more of a disservice than anything else.

Places that you may want to check include your favorite media outlets. They sometimes run stories that to a good job of illustrating how medical negligence law works and how victims of medical malpractice are affected by the negligence that they experienced. Other sources include media that is specifically designed for lawyers, though this tends to be very technical and may cause more confusion than enlightenment.

A white paper released by the Center for Progressive Reform finds that tort reform will not provide any significant savings in healthcare, according to a report on Healthcare Payer News. In fact, according to the article, the white paper found that the cost of malpractice insurance and the lawsuits that patient's file against negligent doctors account for only 0.3 percent of annual healthcare costs.

The white paper claims that the real costs of healthcare emanate from high prices for prescription drugs and an increase in the amount of chronic diseases. Additionally, people are enjoying longer life spans these days and that means that healthcare inevitably costs more as these older individuals require treatment for their conditions.

One of the typical arguments given to support the position that malpractice lawsuits end up driving up the costs of medical care for everyone is based on the idea that doctors perform some procedures simply to avoid being sued for negligence. The white paper found that, contrary to this assertion, family pressure, the fact that the technology exists to even perform those procedures and the doctor's own financial motivations oftentimes play into why some procedures are ordered.