4 Florida Laws That Apply To Hospital Errors Cases
Safety should be a top priority at Florida hospitals, but data reveals that some health care facilities fall short when it comes to exposing patients to a risk of harm. In an article published by Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, researchers reported that more than 200,000 individuals die from hospital errors every year, including health care-acquired infections, accidents, and injuries. Many other patients survive, but they experience extreme physical, financial, and emotional losses from hospital errors.
Florida medical malpractice concepts apply to these cases, so it is possible to recover monetary damages. You may be entitled to amounts for medical costs, pain and suffering, and many other losses. However, there is an entire body of laws that affect your rights. Your Miami hospital errors attorney has in-depth knowledge of the details, but there are a few helpful basics.
- Florida’s Medical Malpractice Statute: The starting point for a hospital error claim is what you need to prove to recover compensation, and the requirements are defined in the state statute on medical negligence. You must show that the facility deviated from the prevailing medical standard of care, which is that level of care, skill, and treatment that would be considered acceptable by other health care providers. It is also necessary to establish causation between the hospital error and your injuries, such that you would have suffered harm but for the facility’s mistake.
- Laws on Presuit Requirements: Unlike other personal injury matters, there are tasks a claimant must handle before filing a lawsuit. To reduce frivolous litigation, the law requires the plaintiff’s attorney to conduct a reasonable investigation to determine that there are good faith grounds for a medical negligence claim. This requirement can be met by obtaining a written opinion from a medical expert, which generally states that your case has merit.
- Statute of Limitations: The deadline for filing other personal injury lawsuits is four years, but it is just TWO years in a hospital errors case. The statute of limitations starts to run on the date that the incident giving rise to the medical malpractice claim occurred. If you do not initiate litigation before the deadline expires, you are barred from ever recovering compensation.
- Florida’s Discovery Rule: There is an exception to the statute of limitations when the patient did not discover the hospital error right away. The “discovery” rule extends the deadline up to four years when the patient did not find out about malpractice and could not have discovered it through the exercise of reasonable diligence.
Speak to Our Florida Medical Malpractice Lawyers About Hospital Errors
It is useful to keep these laws in mind, but you can count on our team at Freidin Brown, P.A. to handle the details for a hospital error claim. For more information on your rights and remedies, please contact our offices in Miami or Fort Myers, FL to speak to one of our medical malpractice attorneys. You can call 305-371-3666 or please contact me to set up a complimentary consultation.
