When you go to the hospital, or any other doctor’s office, you expect to be properly treated for whatever injuries or illness that you may have. Most of the time, your doctor accurately diagnoses you, executes a proper care plan, and you are on your way to healing. But sometimes, your doctor or other medical staff doesn’t act accordingly, misdiagnoses you, or actually causes you further harm through their actions. When that happens, it’s called medical malpractice, and you can file a claim against the doctor, staff member, or hospital who harmed you.
It might be intimidating to take legal action against your doctor who harmed you, but that’s where we can help. With legal support from our experienced Murphysboro medical malpractice lawyer from Prince Law Firm, you’ll be able to confidently take a stand against the doctor or hospital who mistreated you or your loved one. You shouldn’t have to endure the injustice of improper medical care at all, let alone on your own. We will help you every step of the way to ensure the medical professional who harmed you is held accountable for their negligent actions.
Elements of Medical Malpractice
When one of our personal injury lawyers takes your case, we will begin investigating every aspect of your situation so we can get a clear picture of what occurred. Our main focus in your case will be proving that the elements of medical malpractice were present because that is essential to proving the medical provider’s fault and winning your case. Here are the elements that give you a strong case by proving the healthcare worker acted negligently:
- Establishing that the provider owed the patient a duty of care.
- The provider breached or failed to meet the duty of care.
- That breach of care directly caused injury to the patient.
- The patient suffered from injuries and other damages because of the breach of care.
In healthcare, doctors and other medical professionals are expected to follow a duty of care. This means that physicians are expected to provide a patient with a level of care that any reasonable person in the same profession would deem acceptable. In other words, they are expected to prevent their patient from harm. When they are negligent and instead end up causing their patient harm, then a physician has breached their duty of care.
Our Murphysboro med mal lawyer knows that proving negligence is essential to your claim. In order to prove that your physician breached the duty of care, we’ll bring in an expert who will testify to what they would have done in the same situation. This will prove that your doctor did not act accordingly to the common practice for your injuries or illness.
Then, with your medical records, we’ll be able to prove that your physician’s negligent actions that breached the standard of care directly caused further injury to you. Once we prove that, we’ll use your medical bills and documentation of any other costs that you incurred from the injury to determine what you are owed in damages.
What Damages You Can Recover for Med Mal in Illinois
As stated above, once we prove your physician is at fault, we can shift our focus to calculating the amount of money you are owed in compensation. Documentation will help us determine what is a fair amount for you to receive, but there are other things we can look into to ensure full compensation for everything you were subject to from the injury. Here are the different types of damages you can recover in a medical malpractice case in Illinois:
- Economic. Also known as actual damages, economic damages are used to compensate you for the financial burden that the injury caused. In a claim, these are the damages that can be calculated directly from your documents, like medical bills, lost wages, and lost earning capacity due to your injury.
- Noneconomic. These damages can be harder to put a number to because they are not directly associated to bills or concrete injuries. Instead, these damages are for more abstract injuries, like emotional injuries. Some noneconomic damages that you can recover are pain and suffering, anxiety, permanent disfigurement, loss of consortium, and loss of enjoyment of life.
Although you cannot recover punitive damages in Illinois, our state has no limitations on damages that you can receive in a medical malpractice claim. This is why it’s important to have an experienced medical malpractice attorney from Prince Law Firm on your side. We will work carefully to ensure that you are getting the full compensation you are owed for both economic and noneconomic damages.
Contact Our Murphysboro Med Mal Lawyer Today
In your medical malpractice claim, you might want to wait until you are fully healed to take legal action, but you should contact a lawyer right away so you don’t run out of time. In Illinois, you only have two years from the injury to file a med mal claim, according to the statute of limitations. You don’t want to take the risk of waiting too long and then being unable to hold the liable party responsible for their negligence.
At Prince Law Firm, we know a med mal case can feel like too much to handle, especially when you’re still healing from the injury. But with the experienced legal help from our Murphysboro medical malpractice attorney, you can be granted peace of mind because we will hold the negligent healthcare worker accountable for their actions. We will work hard to get justice for you so you can focus on healing, and so we can ensure they can’t inflict the same pain on anyone else. Reach out to us today so we can begin discussing your options.
