Chicago Medical Malpractice Lawyer

Medical malpractice occurs when a surgeon, anesthetist, nurse or other healthcare provider causes harm to a patient in their care due to negligence or error. A patient who is injured because of medical malpractice, such as doctor’s failure to diagnose a terminal illness or a surgeon who operates on the wrong body part, may be eligible to seek compensation.

At Cooney & Conway, our experienced attorneys are prepared to discuss your situation and determine what legal options may be available to you during the free consultation we offer. Worried about the cost of hiring a lawyer? Our firm accepts injury cases on contingency, which means there are no upfront costs or fees to pay to engage our legal services.

Call our trusted Chicago law firm for your free case review today: (800) 322-5573.

What Is Considered Medical Malpractice in Illinois?

Medical malpractice occurs when a healthcare provider fails to deliver care that complies with the accepted care standard, resulting in harm to a patient.

What Is the Accepted Standard of Care?

The acceptable standard of care serves as the benchmark against which medical professionals are measured when evaluating potential malpractice claims:

• Level of Care: The standard reflects the expected level of attention, caution, and prudence that healthcare providers must exercise when treating patients, from neighborhood clinics to major hospital systems.
• Skill Level: The appropriate skill level meets or exceeds what medical professionals with similar training and background should reasonably demonstrate when diagnosing and treating patients.
• Treatment Provided: Includes widely accepted and appropriate treatment protocols that conform to established medical guidelines recognized by the Illinois medical community and medical institutions.

How Do I Know if My Case Qualifies as Medical Malpractice?

For your experience to qualify as medical malpractice that can be pursued in the Illinois court system, it must first meet specific legal criteria. The following breakdown explains what elements must exist for a case to qualify as medical malpractice in Illinois:

An Established Duty of Care Exists

A formal doctor-patient relationship must have existed at the time of the alleged malpractice. This relationship creates a legal obligation for the healthcare provider to deliver care that meets professional standards. For example, a physician who is currently treating you at a hospital has assumed a duty of care, whereas a doctor who offers casual advice at a social gathering has not.

The Healthcare Provider Deviated From the Accepted Standard of Care

Your healthcare provider must have failed to provide treatment that meets the accepted standard in their field. This deviation might involve making errors that other reasonably competent medical professionals would not have made under similar circumstances. Medical experts familiar with local practices must be able to testify that the care fell below acceptable standards.

The Substandard Care Was the Direct Cause of Harm

The substandard care must be the direct cause of your injuries or harm. If your condition would have worsened regardless of the treatment provided, proving medical malpractice becomes more challenging. The link between the medical error and your suffering must be clear and demonstrable through medical evidence and expert testimony.

The Patient Suffered Measurable Damages

You must have suffered significant harm that can be quantified. This includes physical pain, additional medical expenses, lost income from inability to work, or reduced quality of life. Illinois law requires that the damages be substantial enough to warrant legal action and compensation.

How Much Compensation Can I Recover for Medical Malpractice?

No attorney can guarantee a specific outcome. The amount of compensation that may be awarded to victims of medical malpractice varies widely by case. This is because each case is unique. One patient might have suffered significantly greater physical harm than another patient.

Generally, medical malpractice victims may be entitled to recover several types of compensation, including:

Economic Damages

These damages can be easily quantified with employee records, medical invoices and other documentation:

• Current and future medical expenses
• Lost wages and diminished earning capacity
• Rehabilitation and specialized equipment costs
• Long-term care needs

Non-Economic Damages

These damages have no tangible proof and are therefore harder to measure:

• Pain and suffering
• Emotional distress
• Loss of enjoyment of life
• Loss of consortium
• Disfigurement or disability

Unlike some states, Illinois no longer imposes damage caps on medical malpractice awards, following a 2010 Illinois Supreme Court ruling that declared such caps unconstitutional.

Three Common Categories of Medical Malpractice

While medical negligence takes many forms, most cases fall into three primary categories:

Failure to Diagnose a Medical Condition or Injury

A failure to diagnose a patient occurs when a doctor or other healthcare provider fails to recognize symptoms, order appropriate tests, or correctly interpret results, leading to a missed or delayed diagnosis. Patients suffer harm when treatable conditions worsen without proper medical intervention. In some cases, a delayed or missed diagnosis may leave a patient with limited treatment options.

Improper Medical Treatment

Improper medical treatment occurs when medical professionals provide care that deviates from accepted standards. Examples include performing unnecessary procedures (such as a spinal fusion for a minor back injury), administering incorrect treatments (like giving a patient the wrong medication or dosage), or making surgical errors (operating on the wrong body part or leaving surgical instruments inside the patient).

Failure to Inform Patient of Risks

Occurs when a healthcare provider fails to give an adequate explanation of the risks, alternatives or benefits of the treatment or procedure being recommended. Patients have the right to make informed decisions about their care, and failure to provide them with complete information violates this fundamental principle of medical practice.

What Are the Most Common Forms of Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice takes many forms across healthcare institutions. Understanding these common types can help you recognize potential negligence in your own healthcare experience:

• Medication Errors: Involves prescribing incorrect medications, administering improper dosages, failing to check for drug interactions, or neglecting to verify patient allergies in pharmacies and hospitals.
• Misdiagnosis or Delayed Diagnosis: Occurs when physicians fail to correctly identify conditions or diseases despite available symptoms and test results, leading to improper treatment or delayed intervention that allows the condition to worsen.
• Surgical Errors: Encompasses mistakes made in operating rooms, such as operating on the wrong body part, performing incorrect procedures, leaving instruments inside patients, or causing damage to surrounding tissues and organs.
• Birth Injuries: Occurs when obstetricians, nurses, or midwives fail to properly monitor maternal and fetal health, delay necessary interventions, or use improper delivery techniques, resulting in preventable harm such as cerebral palsy, oxygen deprivation, brachial plexus injuries, or maternal complications.
• Emergency Room Errors: Stems from rushed assessments, inadequate triage, or failure to order appropriate tests in busy emergency departments, leading to missed diagnoses of serious conditions like heart attacks, strokes, or internal bleeding.
• Inappropriate Patient Discharges: Occurs when healthcare facilities release patients prematurely before their condition has stabilized, without proper discharge instructions, or without arranging necessary follow-up care, often leading to readmission or worsening health outcomes.
• Failure to Secure Informed Consent: Occurs when healthcare providers neglect to fully explain procedure risks, benefits, and alternatives, depriving patients of their right to make informed decisions about their medical care.

How Does Medical Malpractice Happen in Healthcare Facilities?

Medical malpractice often occurs through specific patterns of negligence that create preventable patient harm:

• Communication Failures: Critical information like allergy data or test results may not reach all members of your healthcare team, leading to uninformed treatment decisions.
• Staffing Issues: Many facilities operate with insufficient staffing ratios, particularly in high-volume environments, causing providers to miss subtle symptom changes or medication timing.
• Electronic Record Problems: As facilities transition to electronic systems, providers may spend more time with software than with patients, sometimes repeating outdated information instead of making fresh observations.
• Diagnostic Testing Delays: Disconnected healthcare systems often mean long waits for crucial tests like MRIs, with results sometimes unavailable across different facilities, leading to duplicated tests and delayed treatment.
• Procedural Shortcuts: During busy periods, safety protocols like surgical timeouts or medication reconciliations may be abbreviated or skipped entirely.
• Hierarchical Issues: Junior staff may hesitate to question a senior physician’s decisions even when they recognize potential errors, allowing mistakes to proceed unchallenged.

How Long Do I Have to File a Medical Malpractice Case?

In Illinois, you generally have two years from the date you knew or reasonably should have known about the injury. This deadline, or statute of limitations, gives no longer than four years from when the actual medical negligence occurred, regardless of when you discovered it. Even if you did not discover the malpractice until years later, the four maximum deadlines still apply in most cases.

Unique Circumstances That Modify Deadlines

Several situations can alter these standard timeframes:

• Minors: For patients under 18, the statute of limitation does not begin until they turn 18.
• Mental Incapacity: If the injured person has a legal disability, such as being mentally incompetent, the deadline may be paused until the disability is stabilized.
• Foreign Objects: If a foreign object was left inside a patient’s body, the two-year period begins when the object is discovered, not when it was left behind.
• Fraudulent Concealment: If a healthcare provider deliberately concealed their mistake, the statute of limitation may be extended.

Who May Be Liable for Medical Malpractice in Illinois?

Medical malpractice liability extends to various individuals and entities responsible for providing healthcare:

• Physicians and Surgeons: Primary care doctors, surgeons, and emergency room physicians who fail to meet the standard of care through misdiagnosis, surgical errors, or premature discharge.
• Nurses and Nursing Staff: Registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and nurse practitioners who make medication errors, fail to monitor patients properly, or neglect to report significant changes in patient condition.
• Other Medical Professionals: Anesthesiologists, radiologists, pharmacists, and various specialists when their actions fall below the accepted standard of care in their field.
• Hospitals: May be directly liable for institutional negligence (poor sanitation, inadequate procedures, staffing issues) or vicariously liable for employee negligence.
• Clinics and Private Practices: Medical groups, outpatient surgery centers, and urgent care facilities that fail to maintain proper standards, equipment, or trained staff.
• Long-term Care Facilities: Nursing homes and rehabilitation centers may be liable under the Illinois Nursing Home Care Act for neglect leading to pressure ulcers, malnutrition, medication errors, or falls.

Who May Be Eligible to File a Medical Malpractice Case in Illinois?

In Illinois, various categories of individuals may be eligible to file a medical malpractice lawsuit. Eligibility depends on your relationship to the injured patient and the circumstances surrounding the case.

The following may be eligible for medical malpractice:

• The Injured Patient: In most cases, the victim of medical negligence files their own lawsuit. Any patient who has suffered harm due to substandard medical care may be eligible to pursue a claim.
• Legal Guardians: If the injured patient is a minor or is declared legally incompetent, their legal guardian may file on their behalf.
• Power of Attorney Holders: Individuals granted power of attorney for healthcare decisions may have the authority to pursue legal action on behalf of the injured party.
• Estate Representatives: When medical negligence results in a patient’s death, the personal representative of the deceased’s estate can file a wrongful death lawsuit based on medical malpractice.
• Family: In wrongful death cases, the estate representative files the lawsuit, but compensation may go to eligible family member, such as surviving spouse, children, parents and siblings.

Contact Our Experienced Attorneys to Determine if You Have a Case

A medical error can have a devastating impact on you and your family. Beyond the physical pain and emotional trauma, victims still have to deal with ongoing medical bills.

At Cooney & Conway, we work closely with qualified medical experts to build compelling cases that demonstrate how standards of care were breached and how those breaches directly caused your injuries. Our firm is prepared to fight for the compensation you deserve while providing you with compassionate client support.

There are no upfront costs or fees to pay: (800) 322-5573.