Yes, medical malpractice is often difficult to prove. Even in cases where negligence seems like the obvious reason for a patient’s injury or death, your medical malpractice lawyer will still need to invest significant time and resources into meeting all the evidentiary requirements to make a case.
What Makes Medical Malpractice Cases Hard to Win?
It’s necessary to prove a medical provider or health care professional acted unreasonably. Proving that requires expert testimony from other medical professionals in the same field who can testify to what a reasonable doctor or health care provider would have done in the same situation.
Unlike a Lot of Personal Injury Cases, Juries Often Side with the Defendant in Medical Malpractice
Motorcycle accident personal injury cases have a reputation for being particularly hard for riders to win. Many jurors are predisposed to assume a motorcycle rider is naturally reckless and likely the responsible party in an accident.
Medical malpractice cases are often the opposite.
Jurors frequently know doctors or nurses in their personal lives and often like their own doctors. Jurors also know the medical profession is hard and that medical outcomes aren’t guaranteed.
The health care industry has also invested a lot of resources into portraying themselves as victims in a supposed tidal wave of frivolous malpractice lawsuits. Their lobbying efforts have led to many tort reforms that make it harder for patients injured by medical negligence to prevail in court.
A jury’s natural predisposition to side with the doctors combined with personal injury laws that often favor health care providers create difficult hurdles personal injury lawyers must overcome in medical malpractice cases.
Proving What Happened and When Isn’t Always Easy
A plaintiff’s medical malpractice lawyer must build a case that proves causation. That means proving your doctor made a mistake and that mistake was the cause of your damages.
In a lot of cases the only evidence for a doctor’s actions are incomplete or vague notes and records.
A plaintiff’s legal team must put in a lot of detail-oriented investigative work to prove a medical specialist made a mistake. Medical malpractice lawyers then need to work with independent medical experts in the same field to prove the choices your doctor made were unreasonable.
Finding a Medical Expert to Testify on Your Behalf
Finding a qualified physician to provide that kind of testimony can be time consuming and expensive. Since personal injury lawyers usually take medical malpractice cases on a contingency fee basis, the cost of getting that testimony is usually coming out of medical malpractice lawyer’s pocket.
Finding a Medical Malpractice Lawyer in Houston, TX
Many injured patients and family members of patients who have died due to medical errors have trouble finding a personal injury lawyer willing to take their case due to the previously mentioned difficulties.
Attorneys need to be confident that they can:
- Find a comparable medical provider to testify to the unreasonableness of your doctor’s actions
- Prove you have serious enough damages to justify the resources and time they will need to invest in your case
Proving damages isn’t always as easy or straightforward as you might assume, especially if you have an ongoing medical condition and the doctor’s mistake didn’t worsen that underlying condition.
Proving causation (i.e., the medical negligence led to the worsening of a patient’s condition) is the responsibility of the plaintiff. Piecing together what happened and proving a doctor’s actions were unreasonable is often a research-intensive, expensive journey.
Many medical malpractice lawyers limit their practice to cases that result in permanent disability, organ failure, loss of limbs and death. In those types of cases, it’s much more feasible to justify high damages to cover the often-expensive investigation and litigation costs.
Defensive Medicine
Some health care advocates argue frivolous medical malpractice cases have resulted in worse patient outcomes in the health care industry. They argue doctors make some medical decisions based on fear of being targeted with a medical malpractice lawsuit.
These experts suggest doctors sometimes order an excessive number of diagnostic tests, which increase health care costs, or even avoid seeing patients with particularly high risks for complications.
These types of medical strategies are known as “Defensive Medicine” and are essentially a way for physicians to insulate themselves from future medical malpractice lawsuits.
It’s worth noting that some studies have suggested tort reforms to medical malpractice laws in Texas have not resulted in a reduction of diagnostic imaging rates, even though those reforms were intended to reduce the need for defensive medicine.
Clinical Practice Guidelines
Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are formalized standards of care that represent the consensus opinion of practicing physicians in a given specialty. If a doctor adhered to the CPGs it will be more difficult to prove they were negligent. Conversely, CPGs can also favor the plaintiff if they can prove a doctor failed to adhere to their CPGs.
Whether CPGs will help or hinder your case depends on the type of error or mistake that led to your injuries. Even when a plaintiff can reference specific CPGs a doctor failed to meet, expert testimony from other physicians is still usually necessary.
Do You Have a Medical Malpractice Case in Houston?
At the Weycer Law Firm we’re committed to helping as many local residents as possible who have suffered severe injuries or the worsening of conditions due to the mistakes of physicians and medical specialists.
We can’t promise we’ll take every case, but we can promise to listen to your situation and help you understand your potential options. If you’d like to schedule a free medical malpractice consultation, please give us a call at (713) 668-4545.
