Florida Medical Malpractice Lawyer

Medical Negligence Attorney in Santa Rosa County, FL, Passionately Protecting Victims’ Rights

When a doctor botches a surgery or a hospital’s inadequate policies injure patients, a claim for fair compensation represents the only path forward for victims and their families. Medical negligence can lead to life-altering harm, but a Florida medical malpractice lawyer at Dan Stewart Law Firm is here to help you get justice, accountability, and financial compensation for all of the losses that can accompany a healthcare professional’s error.

You trusted your providers with your health, and their negligence has only made things worse. Whether you’re facing injuries from poorly performed procedures, advanced disease progression due to a delayed diagnosis, or the consequences of drug administration errors, you deserve an outcome that makes this situation right to the fullest extent possible.

Your legal journey begins with a free consultation with our compassionate medical negligence attorney in Santa Rosa County, FL. We’re here to ensure you understand your rights, what to expect from the legal process, and how our firm can help you secure maximum compensation with minimal stress. Contact us today to find out what we can do for you.

Help Holding Doctors and Hospitals Accountable for Medical Malpractice in Florida

Proving medical malpractice is challenging. Not all negative outcomes in medicine necessarily indicate malpractice. To have a successful claim, you need to provide evidence that shows that your provider’s actions did not live up to what a reasonable and competent provider would have done in the circumstances. You need to demonstrate the direct connection between their errors and the harm you suffered.

Because a medical malpractice claim requires a thorough understanding of scientific information and medical procedures, this isn’t a case you could handle on your own. You’re going to need not only knowledge of the legal process and the healthcare field but also the resources to hire expert witnesses in medicine to review your case.

Dan Stewart Law Firm is here to help you receive the outcome you deserve, managing every aspect of your legal matter and advocating for you at every turn.

Types of Medical Malpractice Claims We Handle

Medical mistakes can take many different forms, and the success of your claim depends on having an attorney who understands the nuances of your specific situation. At Dan Stewart Law Firm, we provide comprehensive representation for victims of malpractice throughout Northwest Florida. The wide array of cases we can assist you with includes:

• Misdiagnoses: Incorrectly diagnosing the patient with a condition they don’t have while failing to diagnose the correct condition, which may mean implementing treatments that do more harm than good while failing to treat the real cause of concern
• Delayed diagnoses: Unreasonably failing to promptly diagnose the patient’s condition, which allows medical issues such as cancer to reach more advanced stages that are harder to treat
• Surgical errors: Operating on the wrong body part, performing the wrong operation, causing damage through improper surgical procedures, leaving surgical instruments inside the body, or otherwise failing to perform a surgery with reasonable care, caution, and skill
• Anesthesia errors: Failing to monitor the patient appropriately, use the right anesthetic medications for the patient based on their medical history, or give the safe and appropriate dose of anesthetic drugs
• Medication errors: Prescribing, dispensing, or administering the wrong medication or wrong dosage amount, which can harm the patient through an overdose or allow conditions that require appropriate medication to go untreated
• Failure to order tests: Neglecting to recommend the testing that a reasonably cautious provider would order based on the patient’s symptoms, medical history, and other specific circumstances
• Misinterpretation of test results: Failing to correctly interpret the results of tests, including imaging and laboratory tests, and take appropriate action to diagnose health conditions or address concerns
• Treatment errors: Incorrectly performing procedures, causing patients avoidable injury or exposure to illness or infection
• Emergency room errors: Failing to provide appropriate care in the setting of an emergency department, including delaying treatment of time-sensitive medical issues, neglecting to take patient histories into consideration, and misdiagnosing ailments
• Labor and delivery errors and birth injuries: Neglecting to provide appropriate care during childbirth, including delaying interventions, failing to monitor the mother’s and baby’s health appropriately, and applying unsafe pressure during assisted deliveries

While you may have grounds for a lawsuit against a physician based on events that occurred at their office, many malpractice cases occur in hospitals. It may be possible to hold the hospital accountable for your injuries, as well, particularly if the institution’s unsafe practices contributed to the medical error. We may also be able to pursue claims against negligent nursing homes, clinics, outpatient facilities, and other types of medical facilities.

What a Medical Negligence Attorney in Santa Rosa County, FL, Will Do for You

Working with our Florida medical malpractice lawyer means having the support you need for every challenge of the legal process. Here’s what our firm can do to move your case forward and pursue the compensation you deserve while minimizing the stress of a claim.

Identifying All Potential Defendants

Doctors may seem like the obvious defendants to file a medical malpractice claim against, but in fact, many different healthcare workers and facilities could potentially face liability for your injuries. When we evaluate your case, we look at it from every angle and consider how the actions of all involved parties may have contributed to medical negligence. While every situation is unique, examples of the types of defendants who may bear liability for the medical error that harmed you include:

• Surgeons
• Anesthesiologists
• Radiologists
• Obstetricians/gynecologists
• Pediatricians
• Specialists of all kinds
• General practitioners, family physicians, and primary care physicians
• Nurses
• Nurse practitioners
• Physician assistants (PAs)
• Psychologists
• Aides and technicians
• Pharmacists
• Psychologists
• Hospitals
• Medical clinics
• Medical groups and physicians’ practices

Often, more than one party could potentially be found liable for the medical error. In every malpractice claim we file, we explore all possibilities, naming numerous defendants when appropriate to ensure full accountability. By thoroughly investigating the care you received and working with medical experts, we may uncover evidence that your doctor’s negligence was compounded by the failures of a nurse or technician or by the hospital’s inadequate procedures.

Medical malpractice claims in Florida are typically paid out by a malpractice insurance or professional liability insurance policy. In the healthcare industry, where a single mistake on the job can cost a patient’s life and unsafe procedures may endanger patients on a large scale, physicians and surgeons aren’t the only ones who maintain professional liability coverage. Nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, and other workers in this field often carry some form of professional liability insurance—and in some instances may be legally required to do so.

Proving Deviation From the Standard of Care

Medical malpractice doesn’t mean simply that the result of your medical care wasn’t what you had hoped. It’s possible to experience an unwanted outcome even when your healthcare providers took competent, reasonable actions towards your care because your body didn’t respond to treatment as you had hoped or because a condition was too advanced for the attempted treatment to fix. This situation is unfortunate, but it does not necessarily constitute malpractice.

The key to determining whether a situation qualifies as medical malpractice is assessing how the provider’s actions aligned with the customary standard of care.

The standard of care refers to established conventions within the medical community. In evaluating your doctor’s actions as they pertain to the standard of care, your Florida medical malpractice lawyer will consider what a competent provider with a similar level of training and experience would do in the same situation.

In some instances, there may be different approaches to addressing certain medical situations. These approaches may be equally valid options, even though they encompass different actions. The conduct that constitutes malpractice occurs when the provider’s actions, or failure to take action, deviates from what a reasonably capable and cautious professional with a similar level of training would do under the same circumstances.

Your doctor may have reason to choose a more invasive surgery over a less invasive option, but leaving surgical tools or materials inside the body is a clear error regardless of which procedure they performed. A physician might decide to run a full battery of tests after an unexpected result to routine screening or to monitor and re-test at an appropriate interval, but simply ignoring an issue that providers with a similar level of training would address may constitute malpractice.

It’s often difficult for patients and their families to know whether their provider deviated from the standard of care because making this determination requires extensive knowledge of their medical situation and how other doctors would address it. Hiring an experienced malpractice attorney is the only way to know for sure whether you have grounds for a successful medical negligence case. Drawing on our extensive history of handling malpractice claims and working with respected medical experts (doctors) when appropriate, we can analyze every detail and explore all avenues for holding healthcare professionals accountable when negligence has occurred.

Documenting Serious, Long-Term Harm From Malpractice

The damage caused by medical malpractice can be devastating. Depending on the circumstances, it’s possible to face:

• Brain injuries that lead to long-term effects on physical and cognitive function, including injuries that result from oxygen deprivation
• Birth injuries, like cerebral palsy, that can impact children for a lifetime
• Paralysis arising from damage to the spinal cord
• Nerve damage resulting from surgeons accidentally severing nerves when performing operations
• Limb loss, often resulting from the progression of avoidable infections or improperly managed conditions like diabetes, that necessitate surgical amputation of the affected body part
• Dangerous drug overdoses as a result of improper prescribing, dispensing, or administration of medication
• Progression of diseases such as cancer to stages that are more difficult to treat as a result of failing to intervene during more treatable stages

Many medical errors carry consequences that will impact the victim for a lifetime. In other cases, a healthcare provider’s mistake may have fatal consequences, leaving grieving family members with a wrongful death medical malpractice claim as their only opportunity to understand what really happened and pursue justice.

Our firm is here for victims of medical malpractice and their families. We approach your case with the utmost compassion, considering all of the consequences that medical negligence has had on your life and documenting your damages with care and precision.

Your medical records can illustrate disability and pain and suffering. By compiling all bills resulting from medical negligence, we can establish the costs of caring for the injuries or illness you suffered. If you missed work during your lengthy recovery, we can pursue compensation for wage loss. In some instances, the harm resulting from malpractice leads to long-term disability. We will pursue compensation for the decline of future earning capacity if this situation applies to you.

The opinions of expert witnesses can also serve to document your damages, providing authoritative predictions of what your future will hold and how it differs from the life you anticipated before you became the victim of a medical error.

In wrongful death cases, we work to secure surviving family members compensation for medical expenses they owe, the loss of their deceased loved one’s financial support, and the many non-economic ways in which the avoidable loss has affected their lives.

How Dan Stewart Law Firm Can Help

Every medical malpractice case is unique, but one fact these claims have in common is the complex and challenging nature of taking legal action. With Dan Stewart Law Firm on your side, you’re as prepared as possible for the legal process, with a dedicated advocate committed to alleviating your worries and minimizing your stress. Right now, you need to be focusing on getting stronger, not on the intricate demands of a legal matter.

Our team is here for every stage of your case, from the initial consultation and evaluation of your potential case to the detailed investigation of your full medical treatment, the preparation of your claim against negligent providers, and the resolution of your case through settlement negotiations or a trial.

Why Choose Dan Stewart Law Firm as Your Florida Medical Malpractice Lawyer?

Retaining Dan Stewart Law Firm to handle your medical negligence case means seeing the benefits our team’s insider knowledge provides, being prepared for the possibility of a trial, and having access to immediate assistance for time-sensitive matters.

A Team With Insider Knowledge of the Opposing Side’s Case

At our firm, teamwork makes the dream work, with staff members who have previous experience working in long-term care facilities, in defense law firms, and in other settings relevant to cases like yours. With the unique insights this experience gives our team into legal matters of all kinds, we know what the other side is doing even before they do. We’re able to anticipate their moves and build proactive strategies to make your case more effective.

Willingness to Fight for Injured Patients in Court

Medical negligence cases demand commitment and intense preparation. Dan Stewart Law Firm is willing to take your case as far as necessary, and we prepare for that possibility by building every case for a potential trial. We’re confident in the courtroom and skilled in presenting complex cases before judges and juries, using technical medical data to make meaningful arguments for fair compensation. We also use this strong preparation as leverage in negotiations when an out-of-court settlement is feasible.

24/7 Availability to Protect Your Rights and Answer Your Questions

Medical errors and emergencies don’t always follow regular business hours. When you have an urgent need for legal guidance, our firm is here to assist you at any time of day. We’re available 24/7 to handle time-sensitive matters and help you determine how to proceed when you believe you or a loved one has become the victim of a serious medical error.

Contact a Florida Medical Malpractice Lawyer at Dan Stewart Law Firm Today for a Free Case Review

Despite the challenges of medical malpractice cases, every patient injured through a healthcare provider’s error deserves guidance they can trust. Our firm makes getting legal help accessible through free initial consultations, representation at no upfront cost, and home and hospital visits utilizing “The 4U mobile,” our dedicated RV complete with all facilities needed to meet in person and discuss your case.

For help from a medical negligence attorney in Santa Rosa County, FL, contact Dan Stewart Law Firm online or call 850-972-8002 today.