Medical Negligence – Do You Have A Case?

During my many gratifying years as a family physician it was not unusual for patients to confide their dissatisfaction with care they had received elsewhere in the health care system.

A particularly unsatisfactory experience often causes patients to wonder if they have been the victim of medical negligence. What should a concerned patient know about dealing with such a concern?

A bad outcome to care is not necessarily the product of negligence. For example, it is wrong to start with a poor result and the apply hindsight to work backwards to find negligence; quality is not defined in retrospect. Similarly, a carefully considered but wrong judgment by a physician is likely to be found to be an error but not negligence; providers are not held to a standard of perfection and, sadly, wrong decisions are sometimes made. In some cases responsibility for a bad outcome cannot be ascribed to a specific cause but rather, is said to due to a "misadventure". In yet other