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Unfortunately, health care professionals sometimes commit mistakes while treating patients. Individuals who sustain injuries as a result of medical malpractice may be able to recover monetary awards for the damage caused. These awards can help victims obtain additional health care required as a result of the malpractice and provide compensation for the suffering the victim endures.

What is Medical Malpractice?

The usual legal theory under which a medical malpractice claim is made is negligence. In general terms, medical malpractice occurs when a patient suffers an injury as a result of a health care professional’s negligent act or omission. Specifically, under a negligence theory, the claimant must prove that the health care professional had a duty of care, that a violation or breach of the applicable standard of care occurred, and that the result of this breach caused compensable injury.

There are numerous ways in which medical malpractice may occur, including, but not limited to, the following:

1. 1. Failing to diagnose a patient;
2. 2. Misdiagnosing a patient;
3. 3. Performing unnecessary surgery;
4. 4. Committing surgical errors;
5. 5. Administering improper medication or dosing; or
6. 6. Prematurely discharging a patient from a medical facility.

Types of Damages Recoverable

It is possible to recover both economic and non-economic damages for medical malpractice. However, under Illinois law, punitive damages are not available. Economic damages include items like medical bills for treatment, wages lost, or the loss of future earning capacity that was caused as a result of the malpractice.

In addition, a victim of medical malpractice can be awarded non-economic damages. This form of damages is more difficult to prove and to value because they are more subjective than economic damages. Though more difficult to demonstrate, non-economic damages can result in larger awards for claimants. Currently, there is no cap on non-economic damage awards in Illinois.

Non-economic damages include the loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, and pain and suffering. Physical pain and suffering involves the actual pain and discomfort that results from the injury. Alternatively, mental pain and suffering relates to any emotions connected with the physical pain or trauma. This may include mental anguish or emotional distress, as well as many other emotions or feelings.

The statute of limitations is another important aspect of medical malpractice claims. Pursuant to Illinois law, a lawsuit must be filed within two years of the date the claimant knew or reasonably should have known of the injury, but in no event can a claimant bring an action more than four years after the date on which the alleged act or omission occurred. For a claimant under the age of 18, the limitation period is eight years from the date of the act or omission, with the exception that a claim cannot be filed after the date on which the minor claimant turns 22 years of age.

Contact Our Skilled Attorneys

If you would like more information about medical malpractice claims, speak with an experienced Illinois personal injury attorney. At Drost, Gilbert, Andrew & Apicella, LLC, we proudly provide legal representation for areas such as Crystal Lake, Des Plaines, and Deer Park, among many others.

About the Author: Attorney Ken Apicella is a founding partner of DGAA focusing in the areas of personal injury, employment, insurance coverage disputes, and civil litigation. Ken earned his J.D. from DePaul University College of Law in 1999. He has been named a SuperLawyers Rising Star and a Forty Illinois Attorneys Under Forty to Watch. Ken has written and lectured for the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education and regularly serves as a moderator at Northwest Suburban Bar Association's Continuing Legal Education seminars.

The relationship between doctors and hospitals is a complex one. Most people assume that the doctors work for or are partners in the hospital. While some hospitals choose to employ their doctors, it is much more common for the doctors to be independent contractors. The hospitals give the doctors the right to admit patients to the hospital and use their facilities, a decision known as “credentialing.”

Yet, hospitals cannot simply give privileges to whomever they want. The law imposes a duty on hospitals to exercise reasonable care in managing their facilities in order to protect patients. Failure to do so can see the hospital held liable for negligent credentialing.

What Is Negligent Credentialing?

Negligent credentialing occurs when a hospital allows a physician to use their facilities despite that physician’s lack of qualifications. Illinois law requires a plaintiff to prove three things in order to prevail on a negligent credentialing claim:

1. 1. The hospital breached its duty of care by improperly granting staff privileges to an unqualified physician;
2. 2. The physician breached the medical standard of care by providing medically negligent treatment in conjunction with their negligently awarded privileges; and
3. 3. The awarding of the privileges was the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injuries, meaning that the direct cause of the injuries was the fact that the hospital negligently granted staff privileges to the doctor.

One of the difficulties of winning on a negligent credentialing claim is proving that first element. This requires evidence of what the hospital knew when they credentialed the physician and how thorough their procedures were. The Illinois Supreme Court recently took a case to determine whether plaintiffs in a lawsuit may have access to those records, Klaine v. Southern Hospital Services.

Klaine v. Southern Illinois Hospital Services

The issue in Klaine arises from a colon surgery gone wrong. The plaintiff wanted to pursue a negligent credentialing claim against the hospital, and as part of discovery process the plaintiff requested information about the surgeon’s credentialing process, such as his work history, prior insurance claims against him, and recommendations about his credentialing by the hospital staff. The hospital resisted, citing an Illinois law requiring that a physician’s application for staff privileges be kept “confidential.” The appeals court decided that there was a difference between general confidentiality rules and “privilege,” the special, heightened form of confidentiality that protects things from disclosure during a lawsuit. The Supreme Court will now take the case on to determine if the appeals court was correct in that determination.

The landscape of medical malpractice law is constantly changing. If you have been injured by a physician’s negligence and want to learn more about your options, contact a Crystal Lake medical malpractice attorney at Drost, Gilbert, Andrew & Apicella, LLC today. Our firm helps injured patients all across the northwest suburbs, including in towns like Inverness, Palatine, and Schaumburg.

About the Author: Attorney Ken Apicella is a founding partner of DGAA focusing in the areas of personal injury, employment, insurance coverage disputes, and civil litigation. Ken earned his J.D. from DePaul University College of Law in 1999. He has been named a SuperLawyers Rising Star and a Forty Illinois Attorneys Under Forty to Watch. Ken has written and lectured for the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education and regularly serves as a moderator at Northwest Suburban Bar Association's Continuing Legal Education seminars.

People routinely place their lives in the hands of medical professionals like surgeons, trusting that they will be careful and responsible. At the same time, people understand that accidents do happen. Surgery can be a difficult process, and there are some complications, like infections, that may occur even if the doctors do everything right. Still, there are certain surgical mistakes that medical professionals universally agree should never occur.

Generally speaking, these “never events” include leaving surgical implements in a patient, performing operations on the wrong site, performing the wrong type of operation, and performing the surgery on the wrong patient. Despite this universal agreement that such completely preventable mistakes should never happen, a study from Johns Hopkins University reveals that surgeons make these sorts of errors with startling regularity.

The Johns Hopkins Study

The study analyzed data that researchers gleaned from the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), a database of medical malpractice claims. The law requires hospitals to report preventable surgical errors that lead to legal settlements or judgments against the hospital to the NPDB. This makes the NPDB a repository of data on never events.

The researchers used data from the NPDB and extrapolated out total error rates based on the thousands of medical malpractice judgments and settlements over the last 20 years. They estimate that there are over 4,000 preventable surgical errors in the U.S. every year. These sorts of errors tend to result in a patient's death approximately 6.6 percent of the time, with another 32.9 percent of patients suffering a permanent injury from the never event.

Additionally, the researchers analyzed the patterns of surgeons who make these sorts of mistakes. For instance, they found that surgeons between the ages of 40 and 49 accounted for over one in every three mistakes and that over 10 percent of doctors had been implicated in more than one never event.

Possible Precautions

Fortunately, there are a variety of precautions that hospitals can take to ensure that these sorts of preventable errors do not occur. For instance, some hospitals have specific protocols in place to inventory surgical implements like towels and sponges before and after a surgery to ensure that the doctors leave nothing behind inside the patient.

Beyond that, many hospitals also use special review procedures at the start of a surgery, ensuring that the patient's records for the surgery match the patient on whom the doctor is about to operate. Additionally, practitioners can also use permanent marker to label the operation site. This can help prevent surgeons from operating in the wrong place or operating on the wrong patient.

If you or one of your loved ones has recently been the victim of a surgical error or other medical mistake, contact a skilled Illinois medical malpractice attorney. Our firm represents injured patients in many different northwest suburban towns, including Schaumburg, Arlington Heights, and Crystal Lake.

About the Author: Attorney Ken Apicella is a founding partner of DGAA focusing in the areas of personal injury, employment, insurance coverage disputes, and civil litigation. Ken earned his J.D. from DePaul University College of Law in 1999. He has been named a SuperLawyers Rising Star and a Forty Illinois Attorneys Under Forty to Watch. Ken has written and lectured for the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education and regularly serves as a moderator at Northwest Suburban Bar Association's Continuing Legal Education seminars.