All hospitals are meant to provide the necessary treatment you need, and to do this, they have to ensure that the environment and the hospital itself are safe for you and your loved ones.

Unfortunately, this is not the case as it is possible to contract some diseases while in the hospital that could further compromise your health and make you sicker. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in 20 patients contracts an infection while in the hospital.

Unfortunately, more than 100,000 individuals die from these conditions. Common illnesses that anyone can get while in the hospital include urinary tract infection, bloodstream infections, lung infections like ventilator-associated pneumonia (VSA), surgical site or wound infections.

All of these infections are known as Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI). Thankfully, many of these infections are not very common, but still they do happen. If you get infected and your condition worsens, what can you do? Whom can you hold liable? Well, that depends on a few factors:

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When it comes to the issue of health and wellness, there’s no room for any error. Medical and pharmacy errors in particular can have very severe and damning consequences for both the patients and the healthcare providers.

Unlike in the past when all pharmacists had to do was just dispense drugs prescribed by the doctors –which, of course, made them less liable in the event of any adverse drug reactions – pharmacists are now required to play a bigger role in healthcare.

In fact, recent studies suggest that pharmacy negligence and errors are vastly underreported and that about 3% of all hospital admissions are due to medication errors caused by the pharmacist’s oversight or mistake in dosage or prescription. In the US alone, the amounts of prescriptions filled are often in excess of 3.5 billion a year. Furthermore, of these cases, about 1.1 billion are filled at a local pharmacy or nearby Walgreens.

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Understanding Medical Malpractice and Filing Medical Malpractice Claims

When a medical professional, such as a physician, fails to conduct their medical duties in a competent and responsibly way and causes harm to a patient it may be considered medical practice. However, these cases are governed by strict rules that define specific requirements needed before a case can be presented in court. While these laws vary from state to state, there are general guidelines that apply to the most common types of medical malpractice claims. Here is an overview of the general principles regarding filing claims.

Basic Medical Malpractice Claim Requirements

If you believe that you or a loved one was harmed by a medical professional and you want to file a medical malpractice claim against that physician, you will be required to prove –

• • That you had a medical relationship with the physician you are filing the claim against. You can’t file a claim against a physician who was not directly involved in your care. For example, you cannot file a claim against a physician for advice given to someone else. In fact, filing a claim against a physician who was consulted in your care can be difficult if they did not treat you. Proving the relationship is a basic component of the lawsuit and generally very easy to prove. [Read more…]