Emergency Room Negligence and Excessive Wait Times

With a medical emergency, every second counts. The sooner a patient suffering from a serious injury or malady such as brain injury or a heart attack is treated, the less likely the patient is to suffer from lasting effects. When treatment is delayed, the chances of permanent injury or death rise dramatically. On top of the pain and suffering a patient and their family may experience, living with a serious condition such as heart or brain damage is costly due to surgery, lifestyle changes, loss of wages, medicine, and installation and upkeep of medical devices.

Harvard Medical Institute Study on ER Wait Times

A recent study by researchers at the Harvard Medical Institute found that the amount of time spent in the emergency room has grown by an astonishing rate. In 1997, the average wait time for a patient was 22 minutes; in 2004, half of all emergency room patients waited 30 minutes or more to be examined by a doctor, according to the study. Even more shocking, the wait time for serious emergencies has also increased. In 1997, the average wait time for a patient suffering from a heart attack was eight minutes; in 2006, the average time was 22 minutes. Most other serious health problems have been forced to wait an average of 15 minutes or more.

Modern medicine can perform wonders, and our health care research & technology systems are developing new treatments all the time. It is a tragedy that while doctor training and available therapies are more advanced than ever, medical emergencies as time-sensitive as heart attacks are being forced to wait to receive treatment. This costs lives.

If you or a loved one has suffered injury or death due to emergency room malpractice, you may have a claim for compensation. We understand that financial compensation cannot undo a wrong, but it can help your family cope with mounting medical bills, loss of income and any future medical needs.

Emergency Room Errors

A trip to the emergency room is not a choice. Patients do not have the opportunity to screen and evaluate emergency room doctors and staff and make an informed choice on whose hands they place their lives in, as they would when choosing a doctor or surgeon under normal circumstances. Yet, emergency room treatment may be the most important and extreme medical attention a person ever receives.

There are two areas of ER errors.  One deals with hospital facility and staffing and the other with patient treatment.

Hospital facility and staffing problems:

  • Failure to maintain an adequate number of doctors and support staff per shift
  • Inadequate training
  • Failure to screen doctors and support staff
  • Inadequate record keeping procedures
  • Inadequate patient tracking procedures
  • Inadequate medication administration procedures
  • Inadequate facilities
  • Unsanitary conditions
  • Unethical policies

Every decision and every action taken by every person who works in an emergency room can mean the difference between saving a life or causing long-term injury or death. One mistake can have catastrophic consequences.

  • Failure to fully treat a patient
  • Failure to fully evaluate a patient
  • Failure to monitor a patient
  • Delayed diagnosis, misdiagnosis, failure to diagnose
  • Medication errors
  • Laboratory errors
  • Contaminated blood transfusions
  • Surgical errors
  • Negligence
  • Delayed treatment
  • Patient dumping

Minimizing Errors

Hospitals can minimize the risk of errors by maintaining clear and consistent policies and procedures for record keeping, patient tracking, administering medications and sanitation. Policies and procedures only work when followed up with training and enforcement. In a high stress environment, all of these elements are necessary to keep things running smoothly.

Understaffing results in doctors and support staff who are tired, overworked and sometimes simply must choose who to treat and who must wait for treatment. This leads to misdiagnosis, delayed, incomplete, or total lack of treatment, failure to monitor unstable patients and a myriad of simple human mistakes which can have deadly results.

Unsanitary conditions cause infections which can mean a longer and more painful recovery period, loss of limbs or organs, unnecessary long-term medical problems or death.

“Patient dumping” is an unforgivable, unethical practice which often results in death. When patients are unable to prove their ability to pay for treatment, normally by providing insurance information, some emergency rooms will refuse to treat them, provide partial and inadequate treatment, or delay treatment until it is too late. During a medical emergency, when patients are too incoherent to provide financial information and are not accompanied by loved ones who can provide the information for them, many emergency rooms which practice patient dumping simply let them die.

If you or a loved one has been the victim of emergency room error, resulting in injury or death, you may be entitled to compensation including:

  • Current and future medical bills
  • Current and future loss of wages
  • Rehabilitation
  • Long-term disability
  • Long-term care expenses
  • Pain and suffering
  • Loss of enjoyment of life
  • Loss of companionship
  • Burial expenses