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3 ways health care can harm you instead of help you

On Behalf of | Jan 15, 2018 | blog, Firm News |

When you see your doctor or go to the hospital, you expect a certain standard of care. The basic purpose of the health care system is to safeguard your health and save your life. 

Unfortunately, this is not how things always happen. Some of it is due to natural consequences. Not all diseases are treatable, not every surgery is a guaranteed fix and so on. However, sometimes the industry is at fault for preventable incidents due to negligence, errors and omissions. Three common areas in which these occur are as follows.

1. Medical malpractice

Medical malpractice cases can be difficult to prove because not all instances are so cut and dry. A more obvious case may be something such as a doctor performing a medical procedure while intoxicated. A more complex claim may involve something like providing an unnecessary treatment, as you would have to prove the treatment was unnecessary and not a part of the standard care any other doctor would provide. Other acts of medical malpractice include:

  • Leaving equipment inside your body
  • Misdiagnosing or not diagnosing you at all
  • Delaying treatment
  • Administering the wrong type or dosage of medicine

Doctors and surgeons are not the only guilty parties. Nurses and others can also make these mistakes.

2. Harmful drugs

Your doctor may not have made an error in your prescription, but the manufacturer of the drug may have made an unsafe product. Drug companies may have withheld information or not completed enough testing before putting something on the market. Sometimes damaging side effects do not come to light until years later, and the medicine that was supposed to help you ends up causing more harm than the problem it was supposed to treat. You can find a list of recalls through the FDA to find out if this affects you. 

3. Defective devices

The amazing strides society has made in technology can be both a blessing and a curse. Medical devices can help someone to walk or breathe, but they can also damage organs and result in infections. You deserve financial compensation for the long-term health consequences from these defective devices.

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