When you go to the hospital or any other doctor’s office, you expect to be properly treated for whatever injuries or illnesses that you may have. Most of the time, your doctor accurately diagnoses you, executes a proper care plan, and you are on your way to healing.
Sometimes, however, your doctor or other medical staff doesn’t act accordingly, misdiagnoses you, or otherwise causes you further harm through their actions. When that happens, it’s called medical malpractice, and you can file a claim against the doctor, staff member, or hospital who harmed you.
It might be intimidating to take legal action against your doctor who harmed you, but that’s where a Murphysboro medical malpractice lawyer can help. With the support of our legal team at Prince Law Firm, you’ll be able to confidently take a stand against the doctor or hospital who mistreated you or your loved one.
You shouldn’t have to endure the injustice of improper medical care at all, let alone on your own. If you decide to work with us, we will help you every step of the way to ensure the medical professional who harmed you is held accountable for their negligent actions. If you want to learn more about how we can help you, consider calling or emailing us now. Meeting with our legal team to discuss your case is free.
Understanding What Medical Negligence Is
When we take your case, we will begin investigating every aspect of your situation so we can get a clear picture of what occurred. Our main focus in your case will be proving that the elements of medical malpractice were present because that is essential to proving the medical provider’s fault and winning your case.
These are the elements of negligence that you’re required to prove in Illinois to have a successful claim:
- That the provider owed you (the patient) a duty of care
- Your health care provider breached or failed to meet the duty of care they were supposed to offer you
- Your medical provider’s violation of their duty of care directly resulted in the injuries you suffered
- You (as the patient) incurred damages because there was a breach of duty of care (as outlined above)
Steps Attorneys Take To Prove Medical Malpractice Occurred in Jackson County
In the healthcare field, doctors and other medical professionals are expected to follow a duty of care. This means that physicians are expected to provide a patient with a level of care that any reasonable person in the same profession would deem acceptable. In other words, they are expected to do what’s necessary (within reason) to prevent their patient from suffering avoidable harm. When those medical practitioners are negligent and instead end up causing their patients harm, a physician is deemed to have breached their duty of care.
Murphysboro medical malpractice lawyers should know how critically important it is to prove that your physician breached the duty of care to have a successful claim or lawsuit. To give you the best chance of success in winning your Jackson County medical negligence case, our legal team at Prince Law Firm brings in doctors as expert witnesses, if necessary, who can testify to what they would have done in the same situation. If it contrasts with what your own physician or other health care provider did, this may prove that they didn’t act according to the common practice for your injuries or illness.
Then, with your medical records, we’ll be able to prove that your physician’s negligent actions that breached the standard of care directly caused further injury to you. Once we prove that, we’ll use your medical bills and documentation of any other costs that you incurred from the injury to determine what you are owed in damages.
What Can Damages You Recover if a Health Care Provider Harmed You in Southern Illinois?
As stated above, once you and your attorney prove that your physician or another medical professional is at fault, we can shift our focus to calculating the amount of money you are owed in compensation.
Documentation, such as medical records and bills or paystubs showing that you’ve missed work, will help us determine what is a fair amount for you to receive. However, there are other things we can look into to ensure you receive full compensation for your injury-related losses.
Here are the different types of damages you can recover in a medical malpractice case in Murphysboro:
- Economic damages: Also known as actual damages, economic damages are used to compensate you for the financial burden that the injury caused. Your past and future medical costs, as well as your lost wages and anticipated lost earnings, are examples of these types of damages.
- Noneconomic damages: These damages can be harder to put a number to because, oftentimes, there aren’t bills for them as they’re not directly associated with concrete injuries. Instead, these damages are for more abstract injuries, like emotional ones. Some noneconomic damages that you can recover in Illinois include pain and suffering, anxiety, permanent disfigurement, loss of consortium, and loss of enjoyment of life.
While some personal injury victims are entitled to punitive damages as compensation for their losses, Illinois law, and more specifically 735 ILCS 5/2-1115, spells out how medical malpractice plaintiffs are not entitled to this type of monetary award.
One of the best ways to ensure you receive maximum compensation for losses you sustained in due to an Illinois health care provider’s negligence is to contact a Murphysboro medical malpractice lawyer. When you hire us at Prince Law Firm, you can count on us to carefully tabulate all your costs, past, current, and future, to ensure you get the full compensation you are owed.
Contact a Murphysboro Medical Malpractice Lawyer Today
If you’re considering your options for holding the doctor or other Illinois medical professional who harmed you accountable for their actions, you might want to wait until you are fully healed to move ahead in filing a claim or lawsuit. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t contact a medical malpractice lawyer right away, though.
A medical malpractice attorney can help you determine if you have a viable case and, if so, aid you in collecting all necessary evidence and ensure you file any insurance claim or lawsuit by the appropriate deadlines. As for the latter, the statute of limitations applicable in Illinois medical malpractice cases is two years, per Illinois law 735 ILCS 5/. You don’t want to take the risk of waiting too long and then being unable to hold the liable party responsible for their negligence.
At Prince Law Firm, we know medical negligence cases can feel like too much to handle, especially when you’re still healing from the injury or illness your health care provider unnecessarily caused. But with the experienced legal help from our Murphysboro medical malpractice lawyer, you can be granted peace of mind because we will hold the negligent healthcare worker accountable for their actions.
We will work hard to get justice for you so you can focus on healing and so we can ensure they can’t inflict the same pain on anyone else. Reach out to us today so we can begin discussing your options.
