Medical Malpractice FAQs

If a medical professional was negligent, and that negligence caused your injuries, you may be entitled to compensation for those injuries including the following damages:

• The medical costs associated with repairing the damage caused by the negligent act, including future and ongoing medical costs.
• Lost income or wages.
• Pain and suffering, including disfigurement, mental anguish and other non-economic damages.
• A spouse’s loss of consortium.
• Punitive damages in exceptional cases.

As a general rule, the statute of limitations for a medical malpractice lawsuit in South Carolina is three years from the date of the act or omission that gave rise to the lawsuit, or from the time the injury was, or reasonably should have been, discovered. There are, however, situations when the statute of limitations is tolled, or suspended, which effectively extends the time frame within which you may file a medical negligence lawsuit. Along with the statute of limitations, there are other procedural steps that must be followed prior to actually filing a lawsuit in order to preserve your rights as a plaintiff.

In order to protect your right to recover for any injuries or losses you have suffered, be sure to contact our medical malpractice attorneys at Joye Law Firm as soon as you suspect that you have been the victim of medical negligence.

Medical malpractice claims typically fall into one of three broad categories:

• Failure to properly diagnose a medical condition, such as cancer.
• Failure to properly treat a diagnosed medical condition.
• Failure to obtain the patient’s informed consent prior to treatment.

Informed consent is a legal term that refers to the medical professional’s responsibility to fully disclose all of the facts, risks and likely outcomes of a proposed treatment before proceeding and the patient consenting once he or she has been fully informed.

Doctors make mistakes just like everyone else. Whether that mistake rises to the level of medical malpractice depends on whether the doctor deviated from the accepted standard of care. The accepted, or established, standard of care refers to the degree of skill and care that the average doctor with the same qualifications would have provided to a patient who sought care under similar circumstances and who had similar symptoms. A South Carolina medical malpractice attorney can evaluate the specific circumstances of your case to determine whether the mistake made by your doctor was actually medical malpractice.

Simply being unhappy with the outcome of your medical care is not generally sufficient to meet the definition of medical malpractice. Unless the outcome was the result of the medical professional’s failure to use reasonable care, then you probably do not have a medical malpractice case.

Along with the medical professional whom you believe to be directly responsible for the negligence, a hospital, clinic, pharmacy, medical practice, nursing home or other health care facility may be liable, depending on the facts of your case.

The only way to determine whether your unique set of facts and circumstances amounts to a medical malpractice case is to consult with a South Carolina medical malpractice attorney like those at Joye Law Firm. Medical malpractice is a highly complex area of the law. Both the patient’s medical history and the applicable law must be carefully analyzed before a decision can be reached as to whether you have a medical malpractice case. It is often necessary for independent medical experts to review the records and facts in order to determine whether there was malpractice.

Although any number of situations can lead to a medical malpractice claim, some of the more common claims include:

• Birth injuries
• Surgical negligence
• Claims related to anesthesia
• Misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis
• Prescription drug overdose or reaction
• Emergency room errors.

Medical malpractice, also referred to as medical negligence, occurs when a medical professional falls short of the standard of care in the treatment of a patient because the medical professional acts, or fails to act, in a manner which results in an injury or death to the patient. While the term “medical professional” certainly includes doctors, it can also include nurses, dentists, pharmacists, physician’s assistants, chiropractors, physical therapists and others as well.