Who To Make Your Claim Against

Malpractice Claims against Healthcare Facilities

It is possible to sue a facility for medical malpractice. The key element in whether or not it's appropriate to sue the hospital is whether or not it was a hospital employee that acted negligently. If the employee worked directly for the hospital and they were somehow negligent in the delivery of care to you, it may be possible that you would end up suing the hospital rather than suing a physician.

What's Different?

Doctors are not always employees of the hospital. They sometimes have rather complex relationships with the hospitals that they work at and, therefore, a medical malpractice claim is usually file directly against the physician when they are responsible for the negligent delivery of care. The physician, however, does not employ the other people with whom they work, in most cases. For example, nurses, paramedics and the other staff that provide care for patients at a hospital are usually under the direct employment of the hospital itself.

Filing a Claim

When you file a claim against the hospital, you will need to work with the same type of malpractice lawyers that you would work with to sue a doctor. The difference will be that your claim is filed against the healthcare facility or, more specifically, it is usually filed against their insurance company. There are plenty of employees in a hospital that can end up delivering incompetent care to you when you're being treated at one of those facilities. For example, a nurse may fail to deliver the level of care you have a right to expect or the paramedics may end up not performing their duties as you would expect. You generally do not sue these individuals directly, you sue their employer.

Other Reasons

You may also end up suing a hospital or other healthcare facility if you happen to suffer a injury or an illness as a result of the conditions at the facility. For example, if you come down with an infection that ends up threatening your life because proper hygiene standards were not maintained at the facility, you may end up filing a lawsuit against the facility itself. In these cases, the doctor may have, in fact, done everything they could have to provide you with the best quality care possible but their efforts may have been sabotaged by the facility at which they were working. Their care may also have been sabotaged by the other employees at the hospital and, in these cases, it is not the doctor's fault.