Medical Malpractice Attorney

Video Transcript:

At Washington Law Center, our experienced medical malpractice attorneys will generally classify medical malpractice cases by type in order to then best organize our communications and trial strategies when presenting our clients’ cases in court.

The major types of medical malpractice claims, in no particular order, are as follows: failure to diagnose, making an incorrect diagnosis, failure to take a proper history, disregard of reported patient symptoms, failure to order proper tests, imagery, or diagnostic studies, or to employ diagnostic methods appropriate to the clinical circumstances, failure to coordinate transfer of patient care to higher-level providers, ignoring or misreading laboratory results, ignoring or misreading collateral medical history notes, performing unnecessary surgery, performing wrong-site surgery, prescribing or administering incorrect medications or incorrect dosages, poor or nonexistent follow-up care, and lacking coordination between medical providers, premature discharge from a hospital or nursing home, non-admission to a hospital despite the existence of a medical emergency.

If you believe you have suffered any of these generally described types of medical malpractice claims, please call the experienced malpractice attorneys of Washington Law Center for a free consultation about your rights and the remedies that may now be available to you.

Video Transcript:

Pursuant to RCW 7.70.020, a person licensed to provide healthcare or related services, an employee or agent of such a licensed person, and/or an entity such as a corporation employing such persons may be sued for medical malpractice.

In other words, a plaintiff in Washington can sue a nurse, a midwife, a nurse practitioner, a physician’s assistant, a doctor, or any other person involved in the provision of medical care services should medical malpractice result.

In the alternative or in addition to individual practitioners, there will be times when a hospital, clinic, nursing home, or other healthcare facility will be sued.

The choice of whom to sue, for what reasons, and in what amounts is an important point of discussion between the victim of medical malpractice and their attorneys.

Different types of lawsuit strategies will have different potentials that you will want to review with an experienced malpractice attorney.

If you have questions regarding a potential medical malpractice circumstance that occurred in Washington state, please call the experienced attorneys of Washington Law Center today.

Video Transcript:

Pursuant to RCW 7.70.030, the plaintiff must prove that damages from an injury resulted from the failure of the healthcare provider to follow the accepted standard of care, that the provider promised the patient they would not suffer the injury that they did, or that the injury resulted from provision of healthcare for which the patient or their representative did not consent.

Medical negligence is medical malpractice. If a plaintiff sues under a medical negligence theory, they must prove each of four elements in order to prevail.

The plaintiff must prove these elements on a more probable than not basis once all conflicting evidence has been weighed. The four elements are Duty, breach, causation, and damages. In other words, the medical provider had a duty to adhere to a known standard of care, the medical provider breached that duty, the breach of that duty then caused the plaintiff damages that could not be mitigated. Alternatively, a plaintiff may sue based upon a lack of informed consent.

Under this theory, it is not necessary to show that the medical provider breached the applicable standard of care; it is only necessary to show that if the plaintiff had been provided full information, they would not have consented because they would have chosen an alternative medical course, perhaps even including non-treatment.

If you have questions about whether to file a medical malpractice case versus an informed consent case or any other inquiry related to medical malpractice in general, please consult the experienced attorneys of Washington Law Center.

Video Transcript:

At Washington Law Center, we begin each medical malpractice case by conducting a new client interview. We want to know as much as our client can tell us about what happened to them to cause them damages during the course of their medical treatment or non-treatment.

Once we understand the general parameters of a case from our client’s perspective, we will then obtain the available medical records, which one of our attorneys will review.

Once the attorney is familiar with the medical documentation, a decision will be made as to whether to spend the money necessary for a medical expert consultant to conduct a further analysis.

Typically, this costs a few to several thousand. If after both an attorney review and a medical expert review, we decide the case has viable merit and a reasonable probability of success, including sufficient damages available to make the case worth both our clients’ and our own time to prosecute, we will then set a case strategy specific to the particular matter involved.

Often this involves sending a written summary of the case to defense counsel, making a demand if the defendants do not engage in settlement negotiations in earnest once they’ve had an opportunity to digest our medical malpractice and/or informed consent allegations contained within our demand correspondence, we will then file and serve a lawsuit.

This will preserve our client’s statute of limitations and also allow us to begin our pre-trial discovery, motion practice, and other trial preparation activities in earnest.

Once both sides in a lawsuit have had a reasonable opportunity to discover the applicable facts and develop their own positions, our Washington courts generally require that the parties engage in some form of alternative dispute resolution such as mediation or arbitration.

If we attend mediation or arbitration and the defendant refuses to negotiate in good faith or the defendant declines to pay our bottom dollar demand, we will then proceed to trial.

At Washington Law Center, we’re certainly not afraid of jury trials or appeals to the higher courts. We have earned our reputation for success, which you can also review by browsing our results page.

Although every case has different facts and will be decided differently by a judge or jury, if you have questions about a medical malpractice matter arising in Washington state, please call the experienced attorneys of Washington Law Center today.