Medical malpractice is often a collaborative phenomenon

There are probably few people still alive who can remember the days of the individual family doctor who made house calls, carrying with him everything he needed in his black bag. Today the practice of medicine is frequently a joint effort that involves advanced equipment, specialized facilities and teams of personnel. When it works, it works well. But when it doesn’t work, sometimes it can be hard to pin down what went wrong, and who was responsible.

The concept of “hospital negligence” is an outgrowth of the modern emphasis of bringing the patient to the hospital instead of the doctor to the patient. But by introducing patients to many more variables outside of their homes, the risk of liability from causes in addition to physician error increases.

Think of it as a chain of causation: as long as the harm is foreseeable, then any of the following kinds of harm can result in addition to a doctor’s mistake:

• The hospital where the doctor works did not perform an adequate background check that might have otherwise revealed that the doctor had a record of malpractice in past employment.
• The hospital failed to hire enough support personnel to assist the doctor during an event such as a surgery.
• The hospital failed to provide adequate security, allowing a person unauthorized entry and that person harmed a patient.
• The hospital failed to properly train or supervise personnel in sanitation procedures, and the patient contracts an infection after surgery.

We at the The Bowling Christiansen Law Firm recognize that the difficulty with hospital negligence cases is that if you do not have the experience to know what to look for and how to find it, the cause of harm to you may escape your attention. That is why, if you have been injured or have suffered an illness at a Louisiana hospital that is unrelated to why you went there in the first place, you should consult with us to speak directly with one of our medical malpractice attorneys. With our more than three decades of experience in this area of law, you can feel secure in knowing that we can identify the cause of what harmed you, and seek the compensation that you deserve.