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Medical Malpractice Attorneys in Tallahassee, Florida
When you have serious health concerns, you expect your doctor to provide the high standard of care you need to recover as fully as possible. An act of negligence on the part of your care provider can lead to immense, often long-term suffering.- Did you suffer medical negligence at the hands of a care provider?
At Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, we can help you take on major medical providers in the Tallahassee area, including Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, HCA Florida Capital Hospital, or smaller medical care providers in niche practices. Contact a Tallahassee medical malpractice lawyer to learn more about your right to compensation.
Table of Contents
- Malpractice Victims Pursing Compensation
- How Much is Your Medical Malpractice Claim Worth
- What To Know About Medical Malpractice
- Fighting for Compensation After Medical Malpractice
- What To Do After a Medical Malpractice in Tallahassee
- Contact a Tallahassee Medical Malpractice Lawyer
- Frequently Asked Questions
Helping Tallahassee Medical Malpractice Victims Pursue Compensation
Dealing with the aftermath of a medical malpractice incident on your own can leave you incredibly frustrated. The care provider’s medical malpractice insurance company may try to limit the compensation you can recover or may even try to deny that the care provider committed an act of negligence in your care.
At Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, we can help you pursue the compensation you deserve for injuries sustained due to medical malpractice. We have considerable experience dealing with various injury claims in Tallahasse, including medical malpractice claims.
Big Firm Resources
At Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, we have the extensive resources necessary to take on big-name care providers. Did you suffer medical malpractice at Select Specialty Hospital of Tallahassee? Tallahassee Memorial Hospital? You need a law firm with the resources to manage a medical malpractice claim against those care providers. Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, can manage your medical malpractice complicated case for you.
Small Firm Support
Dealing with medical malpractice can cause an incredibly emotional journey. Often, medical malpractice will permanently change the trajectory of the victim’s life. Not only do you need comprehensive legal support that can help you move through the claim process, you need a firm that will provide you with the support you need to cope with those challenges and move forward with your life. At Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, we work to provide that comprehensive support to all our clients.
Convenient Access
In the aftermath of medical malpractice, you do not want to deal with complicated visits with a lawyer as you try to figure out your next steps. At Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, we make getting to us easy. We have convenient locations on both Florida coasts, so you can access us wherever you are.
Do you need a distanced option for your next consultation, either because your injuries make it difficult for you to get out or because you want to remain close to home? We also provide virtual consultations when needed.
You need an attorney with experience negotiating and fighting for the full compensation medical malpractice victims may deserve. At Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, we ensure our clients receive the in-depth support they need at every step of the process.
How Much is My Tallahassee Medical Malpractice Claim Worth?
For a victim of Tallahassee medical malpractice, determining how much compensation you deserve for your injuries and what you should expect as you deal with the medical malpractice insurance company can prove essential to managing your finances and medical costs during this difficult time. At Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, we cannot guarantee the compensation our clients will recover, but we help fight to maximize compensation for medical malpractice as much as possible so our clients can feel confident about the outcome of their situations.
Compensation in a medical malpractice claim may break down into several categories based on the losses you faced due to the care provider’s negligent actions.
Increased Medical Costs
Medical malpractice can lead to substantially increased medical costs in many ways. Suppose, for example, that your doctor misdiagnosed your ailment. You may have received treatment for the wrong condition and suffered the side effects associated with that treatment. In the meantime, your original condition may have grown worse, which may have increased the medical costs you faced due to that condition since you may have needed more advanced treatment.
On the other hand, if your doctor committed a severe surgical error, you may find that you have ongoing medical costs of treatment that may linger for the rest of your life.
Talk to your lawyer about the specific medical costs associated with the medical malpractice you suffered and the compensation you should reasonably expect for those costs.
Lost Income
Frequently, severe medical issues can keep you out of work, often long-term, while you recover. Sometimes, medical malpractice may substantially extend the time you have to spend out of work.
Did medical malpractice cause you to have to miss work unexpectedly? For example, a diagnosis of the wrong condition could cause you to miss work because of the treatments you received for that inaccurate diagnosis. You might have to miss more work because your doctor failed to diagnose a condition for which you could reasonably have received treatment.
If your doctor failed to treat you for your ailment, despite a clear diagnosis, you could miss more time at work and suffer declining health.
Sometimes, medical malpractice may permanently impact your ability to work in your chosen field. You may lose your source of income because of medical malpractice. Talk to your lawyer about what income you lost due to your care provider’s negligence and how to best pursue compensation for it.
Suffering
Medical malpractice can cause immense physical and emotional suffering. Many people struggle with the lack of a diagnosis associated with a serious medical condition. The ongoing uncertainty may cause immense emotional strain. A misdiagnosis may cause the patient to suffer from immense emotional distress, particularly if the patient receives a poor prognosis based on that information.
Furthermore, medical malpractice can erode your trust in medical professionals and make it very difficult to seek care in the future since you may not trust that another care provider will provide the high standard of care you need and deserve.
Medical malpractice may also cause substantial physical pain, especially if you suffer lasting injury due to the negligence of your care provider.
Most medical malpractice claims will include compensation for the non-financial suffering you faced as a direct result of the medical malpractice, as well as the financial losses you sustained due to the care provider’s negligence.
Tallahassee Medical Malpractice: What You Need to Know
The number of seniors in Tallahassee has increased substantially in recent years. Seniors often require more medical care and support than younger individuals, which can mean a higher rate of potential medical errors and, as a result, more medical malpractice claims.
The Florida Statute of Limitations
In Florida, you must file a medical malpractice claim two years after an incident of medical malpractice. If it took you some time to determine that you had suffered injuries or that the medical malpractice occurred, you might have the right to seek compensation two years after discovering the problem.
Notice of Intent and Florida Medical Malpractice Claims
In Florida, you must serve a notice of intent that you plan to sue a healthcare provider before you can take the case to court. The healthcare provider has 90 days to respond to your notice of intent.
Understanding Medical Malpractice in Tallahassee
To file a medical malpractice claim in Tallahassee, you must establish several things about your injuries and the suffering you faced.
- You had a doctor/patient relationship with the care provider that committed the act of medical malpractice against you. You cannot file a medical malpractice claim against a doctor not actively involved in your case and your treatment.
- The care provider committed an act of negligence, including deviating from the standard of care that another care provider, under the same circumstances, would have provided.
- You suffered injuries due to the care provider’s act of negligence. You could not file a medical malpractice claim if you did not suffer injuries due to the care provider’s error.
Types of Medical Malpractice
Medical malpractice may take many forms.
- Misdiagnosis: The doctor diagnoses your condition as something else, despite clear evidence of the condition you suffered.
- Failure to diagnose: You presented with clear symptoms, but the doctor or care provider failed to diagnose your condition.
- Failure to treat: The care provider failed to treat your symptoms, despite clearly knowing what condition you suffered and what treatment should have followed.
- Failure to inform: The care provider did not provide an accurate understanding of the side effects you could suffer due to a specific type of treatment, which might have changed your decision to pursue a certain type of treatment.
- Surgical errors: Your doctor committed an error during surgery, from leaving an item behind in your body to operating on the wrong body part.
- Birth injuries: The mother or child suffered serious injuries during the birthing process due to a care provider’s negligence.
- Prescription errors: Your doctor prescribed medication with known interactions to another substance you already take, a medication to which you suffer serious allergies, or an inaccurate medication dosage. Prescription drug errors could also include the administration of the wrong dosage of medication in the hospital.
- Medical device errors: You may also have the right to pursue a medical malpractice claim against a medical device manufacturer that created a dangerous or damaged device that caused you serious injuries.
Tallahassee Medical Malpractice Lawyer Near Me 833-552-7274
Fighting for Compensation After Medical Malpractice
Following medical malpractice, you may have a long road to compensation. You will generally file a claim through the care provider or hospital’s medical malpractice insurance provider. Medical malpractice insurance companies, however, often make it very difficult for patients who have sustained even severe injuries due to a care provider’s negligence to receive the full compensation they may deserve for those injuries.
You may receive a low settlement offer that fails to reflect the compensation you deserve for your injuries. The medical malpractice insurance company may try to deny the care provider’s negligence or delay the payout for as long as possible, leaving you struggling without the funds you need to take care of your injuries.
At Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, we offer our clients considerable support as they deal with the challenges the medical malpractice insurance company may throw in their way. We know the ins and outs of dealing with the insurance company, and we help our clients maximize their results as much as possible while streamlining the claim process.
After Medical Malpractice in Tallahassee: What to Do Next
In the aftermath of medical malpractice, many people have no idea what steps to take next or how they can best protect themselves. They may wonder how to best handle their claims or protect their right to compensation.
What comes next?
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Matthew Dolman, Tallahassee Medical Malpractice Injury Lawyer
Document everything. Keep copies of your medical records. Some unethical care providers may try to erase records of your previous scans, tests, and results, making it difficult for you to prove medical malpractice.
- Get a second opinion, if needed. Any time you doubt the honesty of your care provider, get help from another doctor to receive answers to your questions.
- Contact a lawyer. A medical malpractice lawyer can help you manage your claim.
- Keep track of all medical bills related to your procedures since they may help you later put together your medical malpractice claim.
Contact a Tallahassee Medical Malpractice Attorney Today
If you suffered serious damage due to medical malpractice, you need a Tallahassee medical malpractice lawyer who can help you fight for the full compensation you deserve. Contact Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA today at (866) 467-0943 to discuss your right to compensation.
Tallahassee Office
2707 Killarney Way, Suite 205
Tallahassee, FL 32309
(866) 467-0943
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Tallahassee Medical Malpractice FAQs
Do you have specific questions about your Tallahassee medical malpractice claim or your next steps after suffering medical malpractice in Tallahassee? Contact us to ask those questions and receive comprehensive legal support.
If I suffered medical malpractice in Tallahassee, does the doctor that committed malpractice against me have to take care of the resulting medical costs?
After suffering medical malpractice in Tallahassee, you may have a lot of medical bills. Sometimes, you may have significantly increased treatment costs due to your care provider’s error. In other cases, you may need ongoing medical treatment because of the conditions or injuries you suffered because of the care provider’s negligence. All those medical bills can add up.
Following medical malpractice, the care provider or facility that bears liability for your injuries will generally not have to pay for your future medical treatments directly. However, you may receive compensation for your medical malpractice claim that you can use to cover the cost of ongoing treatment for your injuries.
When putting together your medical malpractice claim, work with your lawyer and your other care providers to identify what increased medical expenses you will face from the medical malpractice committed against you, including the future anticipated medical expenses you may face for much of the rest of your life, so that you can include them in your claim.
However, that does not mean that you will end up stuck paying for the cost of treatment for medical malpractice-related injuries directly. In many cases, your health insurance will cover many of those vital costs, which can alleviate some of the immediate burdens you may face while dealing with the impact of medical malpractice.
I faced more complications than my care providers thought I would as I received treatment for the problems caused by medical malpractice in Tallahassee. Can I seek more compensation?
Once you have reached a settlement agreement with the care provider or facility that bears liability for medical malpractice, you generally cannot pursue further compensation for your injuries. As part of the settlement agreement, you will sign away the right to future compensation, even if you later identify further complications or challenges that could impact your recovery and your medical costs.
Often, your lawyer will recommend waiting until you have a reasonable idea of how much treatment for your injuries will cost long-term before you file your claim.
Depending on your injuries and losses, you may need considerable time to recover before your doctors can give you a reasonable idea of what future medical treatment might look like. Doctors often cannot readily predict what potential complications you might face or how you might respond to treatment.
By waiting to file your claim, you can make sure your claim better reflects the specific losses you may have sustained and the long-term challenges you may have.
My care provider misdiagnosed my illness, but I ended up recovering anyway. Do I still have grounds for a claim?
In some cases, a misdiagnosis or other minor medical malpractice errors might not cause a substantial delay in treatment or increase in your symptoms. Suppose, for example, that your doctor does not notice a hairline fracture when first examining an X-ray.
You leave the appointment with a brace and advice to avoid using the injured limb, and the break ends up healing cleanly, with no further complications. A later look at the X-ray reveals the hairline fracture, which could have caused substantial complications. However, you did not suffer any complications in healing or any harm later from the lack of care.
As a result, you might not have the right to file a medical malpractice claim against the care provider. To file a medical malpractice claim, you must show that you suffered some damage due to the care provider’s negligence.
Do I have to have a medical expert testify on my behalf to file a medical malpractice claim?
In general, you should expect to need a medical expert to testify in a medical malpractice claim. The need for a medical expert can make dealing with medical malpractice much more difficult than other injury claims because medical providers often do not want to speak against one another.
However, at Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, we have worked with a comprehensive team of medical experts who will often help our clients establish the damages they suffered due to the negligence of another care provider.
Those medical experts can lay out the care you should have received for your condition, the mistreatment you received at the hands of your care provider, and the challenges you likely faced from the care provider’s negligence, including how that negligence affected your long-term recovery.
Does the doctor or the hospital where I received treatment bear liability for my medical malpractice injuries?
Whether the doctor or the hospital bears liability for medical malpractice may depend on who committed the act of medical malpractice and the doctor’s relationship with the hospital.
Suppose, for example, your doctor committed a never event while performing surgery on you: you had debris left behind in your wound that led to a substantial infection. An investigation uncovers the doctor’s liability for that incident.
You may have the right to pursue compensation against the doctor directly since the doctor committed the act of malpractice. However, if the doctor works directly as an employee of the hospital, you may need to pursue compensation through the hospital’s medical malpractice insurance.
On the other hand, if the doctor has permission to practice at the hospital but does not necessarily work directly for the hospital, you may need to pursue compensation through the doctor’s medical malpractice insurance.
If another doctor consulted on my case, can I file a medical malpractice claim against that doctor?
Sometimes, more than one doctor may work on your case, have clear reason to identify medical malpractice or the other challenges you may have faced, and bear liability for the injuries you sustained due to medical malpractice. However, in general, you only have the right to file a claim against a doctor with whom you have a direct doctor/patient relationship.
Suppose, for example, you go to the hospital with a serious injury. Your care provider looks at your scans and reports but fails to document and lay out the injuries you sustained. Another doctor may look at some of the scans but not interact with you directly or have access to all the information your primary care provider has, so that doctor might not bear liability for the injuries you sustained.
My doctor did not disclose all the risks I would face from a surgical procedure, and I ended up having serious side effects. Do I have the right to file a medical malpractice claim?
As part of the agreement that doctors make with their patients, they must disclose the potential risks associated with a procedure. That does not necessarily mean that a care provider must lay out every possible side effect or danger of a procedure. Some side effects occur so rarely that the care provider has no reason to mention them. Others may occur only in very specific circumstances, and your care provider might not know about them ahead of time.
However, your care provider needs to inform you about any potential side effects or consequences before you begin using a new medication or undergo a specific medical procedure.
To determine whether you have the right to file a medical malpractice claim following a care provider’s failure to inform you about potential risks, at Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, we may ask some critical questions.
- Would another care provider, under similar circumstances, have disclosed those potential risks? We might need to look, for example, at whether the side effect had a high risk of occurring or whether you specifically fit the profile for that risk.
- Would having the information about those potential side effects reasonably impact another patient under the same circumstances? Would another patient, given those risks, have opted out of the procedure?
Often, deciding for or against a medical procedure means weighing the potential side effects of a procedure with the potential benefits of that procedure. As a patient, you have the right to make those decisions for yourself, not have them made for you by your care provider. If your doctor does fail to reasonably inform you about the risks of a given medical procedure, you may have the right to file a claim.
What happens if a nurse in a Tallahassee hospital commits an error resulting in serious patient injury? Do I have the right to file a medical malpractice claim? Who bears liability?
Nurses often bear a high burden when caring for a patient. Frequently, nurses have more direct interactions with patients than their doctors, especially if the patient remains in the hospital long-term. Nurses may have to administer medication, monitor patients, and take care of patients’ immediate needs, often with inadequate support, staffing, and supplies.
A nurse committing an error often leads to serious patient injury. For example, a nurse may mistakenly administer the wrong dose of a medication or even the wrong medication altogether; or a nurse might miss the presence of symptoms that indicate patient distress. When a nurse commits a medical malpractice error, the hospital will usually bear liability for that error, and the patient will pursue compensation through the hospital’s medical malpractice insurance.
How long does it take to file a medical malpractice claim in Tallahassee?
A medical malpractice claim has several key parts, which you may need to consider as you move forward with your claim and consider how long it may take for you to receive compensation.
First, you must file a notice of intent that you plan to pursue a medical malpractice claim against the hospital or medical care provider. Your notice of intent stops the statute of limitations from counting down and provides the liable party with notice that you intend to pursue compensation for the damages you sustained.
The hospital or care provider then has 90 days to respond. Sometimes, the liable party may indicate an intent to settle, if possible. The liable party may also indicate a plan to fight the claim. During this period, the medical malpractice insurance provider and your lawyer will have the opportunity to investigate the claim details and the compensation you likely deserve for your injuries.
Next, you may need to go through a period of negotiation with the medical malpractice insurance provider. Often, the insurance company will start with a dramatically different stance on the compensation you deserve than you might expect. You might find yourself fighting to get the insurance company to acknowledge the extent of your losses.
Finally, in some cases, your medical malpractice claim may end in court. Most of the time, hospitals and care providers want to settle out of court if possible. Going to court may substantially increase their legal fees, often without giving them any real benefit. However, if you cannot agree with the insurance provider, you may need to pursue a court award for the compensation you deserve.
It can take time to receive a settlement for medical malpractice and recover the compensation you deserve for your injuries. At Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, we help our clients look at the potential timeline for recovering compensation for their injuries and how they can best streamline their claims.
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