Steeler
Footballguy
I’m not litigious at all – never sued anyone before and have only retained an attorney to setup my life insurance. I'm not even really seriously considering it, but thought I should post to get feedback at least about the general questions at the end.
Here is the situation: my daughter wasn’t feeling well one Saturday so we took her to the Urgent Care facility but they couldn’t find anything and recommended that we go to ER. We go to the local ER (not a children’s hospital, but it’s close to our house) and they run tons of tests, but find nothing and say she can stay overnight for observation if we want or we can head home and come back if something drastic happens. They say the white blood cell count is elevated, which might indicate an infection, but it’s still within the normal range. Her heart rate and temp were higher than normal, but we decide to go home assuming it’s the flu (which was their “finding” given that all the tests were inconclusive).
She does OK at home on Sunday and then on Monday we take her to the pediatrician who recommends a cardiologist look at her. We see a pediatric cardiologist on Tuesday and they find massive amounts of fluid on her left lung immediately – they stopped the Echo (ultra sound test of the heart) before it was finished and moved her to ER immediately (at a children’s hospital – different from the original ER on Saturday) and she was checked into the children’s hospital later that day.
She had surgery on Wednesday to drain the fluid and stayed in ICU for 6 or 7 days with chest tubes in this whole time to continue the drainage. She is then moved out of ICU and her total hospital stay is 10 days.
How strong would a case be against the original ER (totally different hospital from the one who cared for her properly) for this particular scenario? I’m not even sure they did anything wrong, they seemed genuinely concerned and said they wished they could give us a better answer when we left.
And then I have some general questions about suing over medical care:
She can continue to go to the children’s hospital for 3 years before she ages out – how would a lawsuit against the hospital affect future care at that hospital?
How would future care at any hospital/medical facility/doctor/etc. be affected by the fact that a lawsuit was previously filed?
Here is the situation: my daughter wasn’t feeling well one Saturday so we took her to the Urgent Care facility but they couldn’t find anything and recommended that we go to ER. We go to the local ER (not a children’s hospital, but it’s close to our house) and they run tons of tests, but find nothing and say she can stay overnight for observation if we want or we can head home and come back if something drastic happens. They say the white blood cell count is elevated, which might indicate an infection, but it’s still within the normal range. Her heart rate and temp were higher than normal, but we decide to go home assuming it’s the flu (which was their “finding” given that all the tests were inconclusive).
She does OK at home on Sunday and then on Monday we take her to the pediatrician who recommends a cardiologist look at her. We see a pediatric cardiologist on Tuesday and they find massive amounts of fluid on her left lung immediately – they stopped the Echo (ultra sound test of the heart) before it was finished and moved her to ER immediately (at a children’s hospital – different from the original ER on Saturday) and she was checked into the children’s hospital later that day.
She had surgery on Wednesday to drain the fluid and stayed in ICU for 6 or 7 days with chest tubes in this whole time to continue the drainage. She is then moved out of ICU and her total hospital stay is 10 days.
How strong would a case be against the original ER (totally different hospital from the one who cared for her properly) for this particular scenario? I’m not even sure they did anything wrong, they seemed genuinely concerned and said they wished they could give us a better answer when we left.
And then I have some general questions about suing over medical care:
She can continue to go to the children’s hospital for 3 years before she ages out – how would a lawsuit against the hospital affect future care at that hospital?
How would future care at any hospital/medical facility/doctor/etc. be affected by the fact that a lawsuit was previously filed?
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