New Orleans Emergency Room Error Lawyer
Hospital emergency rooms in America receive more than 100 million visitors each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Waiting rooms are often filled to capacity while overworked doctors, nurses and other medical staff deal with emergency after emergency, hour after hour. While this situation may create an environment ripe for medical errors, it by no means excuses medical mistakes that could be avoided if doctors and hospitals put patients first and ensured that each patient receives the appropriate amount of attention and care in a timely fashion.
The New Orleans medical malpractice lawyers at the Palazzo Law Firm hold doctors and hospitals accountable for emergency room errors that needlessly harm patients. Our hands-on injury law firm works with each client personally to understand how they were harmed by medical negligence in the ER, and what types of care and compensation they need to make them well again.
Emergency room patients are harmed by unreasonably long delays
You may think that you would be seen quickly when reporting to the ER, but more often than not, you’d be wrong. In fact, the average wait times at an emergency room last more than two hours. About half of all emergency rooms in the country are overcrowded by any measure. But if you have to wait to be seen for a critical condition, serious harm could result that could have easily been avoided had you been diagnosed and treated in a reasonable time.
Hospitals have a duty to provide patient care, and this duty includes providing adequate space and staffing to meet the needs of patients in a timely fashion. If an ER is overcrowded or understaffed, that is the hospital’s problem to solve. If your condition worsened because the ER took too long to see you, they could be liable for the harm caused by their failure. Proving these facts can be challenging to say the least, but the New Orleans medical malpractice attorneys at the Palazzo Law Firm have the knowledge, skills and resources to uncover and understand the most complex facts and communicate those facts persuasively to an insurance company or jury.
Emergency rooms are prone to making serious medical mistakes
Whether in the middle of a long rush of patients or during a lull marked by boredom and fatigue, sound judgment is relied upon when making important medical decisions. Overworked or rushed medical staff in an emergency room are more likely to conduct tests improperly, misread test results and lab reports, and make other mistakes that result in a misdiagnosis or a delayed diagnosis that causes patient harm. For instance, failure to immediately treat a heart attack or stroke can be fatal or leave a patient with long-term or permanent disabilities that could have been prevented by a more timely, accurate diagnosis. Prescribing or administering the wrong drug or dosage and other medication errors are also prone to occur in this environment. Making surgical errors due to misreading a chart or other surgical mistakes is another possible source of emergency room malpractice.
Emergency room negligence can be difficult to prove
Typically, patients who present themselves to the ER are already in distress. Doctors and hospitals (and their insurance companies) will say the patients were already harmed or that the harm they suffered couldn’t have been reasonably prevented. They’ll blame the patient’s condition and not any negligence or incompetence on their part. To prove doctors and hospitals liable, you need experienced, skilled, aggressive and resourceful medical malpractice attorneys to review medical records, interview witnesses and work with medical experts as necessary to prepare and present a strong case demonstrating the harm caused by emergency room errors. The attorneys at the Palazzo Law Firm in Gretna are committed to achieving a just result and fair compensation for victims of emergency room error in New Orleans hospitals.
Call the Palazzo Law Firm Attorneys after Emergency Room Errors in a New Orleans Hospital
If you believe negligence or other errors in a New Orleans emergency room may have caused you harm, call the Palazzo Law Firm in Gretna at 504-433-1442. Your consultation is free, and there’s no fee unless we collect compensation on your behalf.
