When the Hospital Makes an Offer for Medical Malpractice
Increasingly, when hospitals make a mistake, they’ll offer to pay the patient’s bills in exchange for silence. But there’s a lot of reasons you should think twice before taking the hospital settlement for medical malpractice.
1. For Your Own Sake
When a doctor or other hospital worker makes a mistake that causes you injury, that’s medical malpractice. This is a legal term, and if you’ve been a victim of medical malpractice, you likely deserve compensation for your injuries.
For decades, this has been handled in the courts. Once you prove it was the hospital’s fault, they usually have to cover your medical costs, missed wages, pain and suffering, and other losses. In really egregious cases, they may even have to pay a penalty for their negligence. In addition, their malpractice insurance may go up, and they’ll have to report the injury to the medical board and state regulators.
To avoid all these punishments, some hospitals are now offering victims of medical malpractice settlements outside of the courts. In these settlements, they offer to pay all of your additional medical expenses in exchange for your silence on what happened.
Unfortunately, those settlements rarely cover all the costs involved. If you’ve missed work or suffered pain from the experience, you may need a lot more than they offer, especially over time. Typically, you could receive a much larger payout by going through the courts.
The hospital wants to keep their costs as low as possible. And if they succeed by getting you to take a low settlement, yet again, you’re the one who suffers.
2. For Others’ Sake
It’s no coincidence the hospital’s settlement comes in exchange for your silence. Left to their own devices, a lot of hospitals underreport their malpractice cases. They don’t want to face fines, higher insurance, or public scrutiny. And they definitely don’t want to face the courts.
However, the public absolutely deserves to know when certain doctors, nurses, or hospitals hurt their patients.
Imagine a scenario in which you have a choice between two surgeons. One surgery center has four secret settlements on their record for injuring a patient. The other has none. On the outside, both will look the same to you—but your risk of injury with the first center is far higher.
That’s why it’s in your community’s best interest to follow through on your case in public. Accepting the hospital settlement for medical malpractice allows them to hide behind you no matter what they did to cause your injury.
Medical care is so important to all of us that it’s crucial we have accountability when things go wrong. We deserve a transparent system that lets us all make wise decisions about where we receive our care.
By filing a medical malpractice claim, you can get the full compensation you need while helping all the people around you get the best care possible.
Get Real Help for Medical Malpractice
If you’re injured from medical malpractice, you need an attorney on your side who understands how these hospitals operate.
Our Memphis firm has helped hundreds of people injured by someone else’s mistakes, and we don’t receive a cent unless you win.
We don’t do this work to punish or hurt our medical institutions. We do it to help our clients receive all the money they need and deserve in order to get better. And we do it to keep our community safe.
You deserve a compassionate, experienced team at your side who will help you navigate these complicated choices. That’s what we do every day, and we’re very good at it.
To get started, contact us today at 901-327-1212 or use the form below.