Medical Malpractice Communication Errors

Answer:

Many times, clients will not understand what happened in their medical malpractice case. A communication error that we often see is that an assistant or a nurse practitioner will see something and either not communicate it to the treating physician, miscommunicate it to the treating physician, or communicate it properly and a treating physician not see it. All of those provide a basis for a medical malpractice claim. There are procedures and methods of communication that healthcare providers are very familiar with and they should follow them in each and every case.

Many times, for whatever reason, they don’t or it hasn’t been followed and it can be to the detriment, sometimes very severely, of a patient. We had a case rather recently within the last year when that happened. A lady was on home health and she did not have her meds done appropriately. The nurse saw it and reported it to the supervising physician. The physician did not look at it. This lady was catastrophically injured as a result. We successfully prosecute that claim. That’s what a communication error is. If you have something like that, call us and we will sit down with it. We’ll go over it and see how best we can help you.