California Medical Malpractice Lawyer

Modern medicine has come a long way, but it is not yet perfect. Getting an outcome different than the one you were hoping for does not mean that you have experienced medical malpractice. To qualify as medical malpractice, your situation must meet certain requirements:

• A physician-patient relationship existed. You must have actually been a patient of the physician before you can sue for medical malpractice. That means that both you consented to the physician treating you, and the physician agreed to treat you. In most cases, the relationship is easy to prove because you likely signed a “consent for treatment” before the physician treated you. In some situations, the physician-patient relationship can be murky. A common situation is when a physician merely consulted another physician about your case.
• The physician did not meet the standard of care. The standard of care is what a reasonable physician of the same specialty in the same local area would have provided. Meeting the standard of care does not mean that a physician must have provided cutting-edge treatment or the same treatment that a world-renowned specialist may have provided. But if another doctor in your area would have done something differently, then you may have a case.
• You suffered a medical injury because of the physician. Unfortunately, even in the best circumstances, patients do not always get the best medical outcome. To establish medical malpractice, you have to be able to prove that, more likely than not, a physician’s action or inaction either caused a negative outcome for you or reduced your chances of getting a better outcome.

There are different types of medical malpractice. Some of the most common types of medical malpractice include the following:

• Medical misdiagnosis
• Cancer misdiagnosis
• Failure to diagnose
• Medication error
• Medical treatment injuries
• Delayed treatment
• Failure to treat
• Surgical errors
• Gallbladder surgery
• Birth injuries