NJ Medical Malpractice Lawyers
Injuries from Medical Errors? Our Medical Malpractice Lawyers Can Help You
We trust health providers with our lives. Literally. We expect doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and other healthcare professionals to properly diagnose and treat us and our loved ones for a variety of health issues and conditions. Many times healthcare providers deliver this exceptional care. However, sometimes this is not always the case. In fact, far too often medical providers actually cause worse injuries and damages to us, including due to negligence or preventable medical errors. Our medical malpractice lawyers in New Jersey know how serious this can be, including causing life-changing, permanent, disabling, and even fatal personal injuries to innocent people.
Here at the Law Offices of John Allegra, we know just how devastating it can be for a patient or a family to have a loved one seriously injured due to preventable medical errors. Whether the injuries were caused by delay in diagnosis, surgical errors, or birth injury, our medical malpractice lawyers in New Jersey have over 30 years of ensuring victims are fully protected under the law. We are committed to justice and will work with your treating physicians and providers to help explain your damages and future needs, while also working with the leading liability experts to help establish fault against a defendant. There is no risk and no upfront financial costs to you because we offer FREE consultations, pay the upfront litigation costs and expenses for filing, and have a no-fee guarantee which means we do not get paid unless you get paid.
What is Medical Malpractice ?
Medical malpractice is a type of negligence case. Negligence is the failure to act as a reasonably prudent person would have acted in similar circumstances. More specifically in medical negligence cases, a healthcare provider is negligent when he or she fails to provide care within the accepted standard of care that a reasonably prudent healthcare provider would have rendered in similar circumstances. If a healthcare provider fails to meet this standard of care and caused your injuries, he or she could be liable.
All types of healthcare providers could be liable for medical malpractice, not just doctors. This includes nurses, physician assistants, dentists, anesthesiologists, nurse practitioners, CRNAs, dental hygienists, residents/medical students who are exercising independent medical judgment, and any other healthcare providers. This also includes hospitals, practice groups, surgical centers, outpatient centers, dental offices, and other businesses offering medical services.
A study from John Hopkins claims that roughly 250,000 people in the United States die each year from medical errors. However, the study also knows an estimate that the true number could be as high as 440,000 due to the difficulty in determining whether there were preventable medical errors. This means preventable medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States behind only heart disease and cancer. While this is a shocking statistic, other studies have found that adverse events at hospitals were attributed to medical errors between 53% to 58% of the time.
Common Types of Claims
Our medical malpractice lawyers in New Jersey know that there could be many different types of preventable errors that could harm patients. Some of the most common types of errors or cases include the following:
Failure to Diagnose
If a physician fails to diagnose a serious condition such as a heart attack, cancer, pulmonary embolism, aortic dissection, fetal distress, sepsis, or another type of serious ailment, it could be due to medical negligence.
Delay in Diagnosis
Even if a physician diagnoses a condition, if the physician should have detected and diagnosed it earlier, that could also be due to be negligence. While sometimes this may not be a big issue, when that delay is cancer or another serious health condition like a stroke, heart attack, or other emergencies, every day—sometimes every second—matters.
Surgical Errors
One of the most common types of medical errors that most people think of when they hear medical malpractice, it is also one of the most damaging. Surgical errors such as leaving a sponge inside a patient, wrong site surgery (left kidney instead of the right kidney), wrong patient surgery, slips of a scalpel, and other surgical mishaps can all cause serious personal injuries. Many times patients need to undergo a second or third surgery to repair the damage done, all unnecessary. Surgical fires, mechanical burns, and other mistakes all cause debilitating injuries and extreme agony.
Anesthesia Errors
Anesthesia and surgical errors go hand-in-hand. Only anesthesia errors can really have significant and lasting consequences. Anesthesia is a cocktail of three powerful drugs meant to block pain, immobilize the body, and place a patient to sleep. This means that victims of anesthesia mistakes could have catastrophic injuries to their body, including to their brain, peripheral nervous system, eyesight, hearing, taste, and other organ systems. Anesthesia errors due to negligence could also result in fatal overdoses.
Birth Injuries
There is perhaps no one more innocent and defenseless than a neonate, or newborn. Whether the baby is a fetus still developing or just born, the damages from errors are magnified on these small, vulnerable little bodies. Often even slight medical errors could result in a lifetime of complications for a newborn. Some of the most common examples of birth injuries that our medical malpractice lawyer in NJ could handle for you include the following:
- Cerebral palsy
- Hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE)
- Seizure disorders
- Forceps injuries and damage
- Brachial plexus nerve injuries, including ruptures, avulsions, tears, neuromas, and other damage
- Delays in emergency c-sections
- Preeclampsia or eclampsia
- Gestational diabetes
- Broken bones, clavicle or collar bone specifically, and
- Other types of serious birth injuries or damages.
Emergency Room Delays
Patients who go to the emergency department of a hospital expect to be timely treated based on the seriousness of their injuries. While this generally happens, unfortunately, emergency rooms are known to have long waits and delays. Patients suffering catastrophic health conditions need to be treated right away or they could suffer preventable injuries.
Nursing Home Malpractice
Placing a loved one in a nursing home means admitting that we can no longer provide the care and treatment that our loved one needs. This is a difficult thing to do. While many nursing homes provide exceptional care, others do not. Conditions such as pressure sores, bedsores, pressure ulcers, and other related conditions are known as “never events” which means they should never happen with the proper level of care required in New Jersey. Other errors such as wheelchair accidents, neglect, abuse, sepsis, breathing tube occlusions, prescription errors, and other common mistakes could result in life-threatening injuries due to preventable negligence.
Defective Drugs or Prescription Errors
We trust pharmacists to properly combine our medications and ensure there are no contradictions or reactions with other drugs we are taking. We also trust our pharmacists to give us the proper dosage and frequency. Unfortunately, this does not always happen and defective drugs or prescription errors can result in catastrophic injuries to innocent people.
Injured in New Jersey? We Can Help
The most difficult thing about these types of cases is determining whether you have been a victim. Healthcare providers will almost never admit to making a mistake, and will often blame “natural and unavoidable consequences.” Other times they may even blame you.
Our medical malpractice lawyers in New Jersey know that the phrase “natural and unavoidable consequences” is a red flag for preventable errors. Some other common indications of doctor misconduct or negligence include the following:
- An unexpected result
- You are told to not get a second opinion
- The doctor or healthcare provider refuses to talk to you or answer questions
- Your surgery or procedure went longer than expected
- You are blamed for your injuries
- A second, unexpected surgery is required
- Your child is not meeting normal milestones, and
- You have been seriously injured after medical treatment and do not know why.
Learn how the Law Offices of John Allegra can evaluate your claim and determine whether you have been the victim of medical malpractice in New Jersey. We have over 30 years of experience representing victims of egregious errors in Jersey City, Hazlet, and the rest of NJ. Call today for a FREE case evaluation and learn about our no-win, no-fee guarantee by calling (201) 433-8282 or send us a message through our contact us box available here.