Medication can be lifesaving, but mistakes with medication can make it deadly, or at least dangerous enough to cause you serious harm. If your doctor or a pharmacist made errors in prescribing your medication or filling it, you could be left with damages you need help getting compensation for.
Our attorneys are available to take your case and fight doctors, malpractice insurance, and any other negligent parties along the way to help you get the compensation you need. This can include compensation for the treatment you needed to reverse the harm the medication caused you, as well as long earnings during the time your medication injuries took you away from work and compensation for the pain and suffering the injury caused you.
For help with your case, call our medication error attorneys at Rice Law right away at (410) 694-7291.
When Can You Sue for a Medication Error in Frederick?
Medication can cause serious injuries if it is prescribed or filled improperly. Our medication error lawyers can take your case and file in court under certain circumstances to help you get the compensation you need – but you need to meet the qualifications for a claim first.
Procedural Qualifications
Our lawyers will help go through the steps of getting your case to a lawsuit before we can file in court. Maryland has a setup for malpractice claims that requires some procedural hurdles before the case can be filed, including getting a certification from another doctor that this claim does indeed have merit.
Grounds for a Lawsuit
Lawsuits for medication errors are usually filed against doctors or pharmacies, though you might also sue drug manufacturers for problems with tainted products or faulty advertising/labeling.
When suing a doctor, your claim is usually based on a claim of medical malpractice/medical negligence. In these cases, you have to show that the doctor’s care fell below the standard of care and that that resulted in injuries. In many cases, this comes from carelessly prescribing drugs without discussing the risks to the patient, failing to check for negative drug interactions or allergies, carelessly putting the wrong dosage or drug on the prescription, or otherwise prescribing an ineffective or inappropriate drug. In most cases, this breach of the standard of care is not obvious, and testimony from other medical professionals is usually needed to make out your case.
Alternatively, when suing a pharmacy, you instead need to show that they committed some type of negligence by failing to act reasonably when filling prescriptions. This could be something simple like failing to recognize that a prescription that is usually ordered in micrograms was instead ordered in milligrams (i.e., at 1,000 times the normal dosage) or by making a mistake in filling a prescription at the wrong dosage, with the wrong drug, or for the wrong patient entirely.
There are safeguards to keep patients informed about risks and aware of potential problems, such as drug labeling rules that require lists of negative interactions and side effects or pharmacy bottles having descriptions of the correct pill. If you overlooked this information, it might be used against you in court. Because of this, it is vital to work with a lawyer who can recenter the blame on the medical professionals you relied on or whose mistakes were the true cause of your harm.
Timing
Medical malpractice lawsuits usually need to be filed within the statute of limitations, a law that gives you 5 years from the date of injury or 3 years from the date you discovered the injury, whichever comes sooner. This timing is often complicated to calculate with medication injuries, given that the doctor might continue to give you the wrong medication and lull you into a false sense of security or reassure you that you are taking the right medication without realizing their error. This can potentially extend how long it takes you, through reasonable investigation, to seek out a second opinion and finally discover that the doctor has been making prescription mistakes this whole time.
Damages for Medication Injuries in Frederick
When doctors prescribe the wrong drugs, it does not always cause serious harm. In order to sue for medication errors, you have to show that you were actually harmed and suffered damages – which can include pain and suffering if you do not necessarily face increases in medical bills or time away from work. However, there must be actual harm, which usually arises in two ways.
First, you might not get the relief you need from the proper medication. If your doctor writes a prescription for the wrong medication, and you take it, your underlying symptoms or conditions will go untreated. For example, if you are supposed to be on beta blockers for high blood pressure, but your doctor accidentally wrote the prescription for less powerful ace inhibitors, you might be exercising and dieting like crazy, only to find that your blood pressure remains high.
In a case like this, this can lead to additional suffering, fear of the ongoing effects of heart disease, etc., but sometimes, it can lead to concrete harm like avoidable heart attacks or other health issues. In other cases, the effects might be even worse.
Second, the harm you face could be from the medication itself. Taking meds you do not need can cause additional side effects, lethargy, interruption to your sexual function, liver damage, kidney damage, renal failure, depression, and more. If the medication is working, this might be a trade-off that you are ready and willing to put up with, but if you are taking the wrong drug, you might not even be aware of the potential side effects of that drug, let alone willingly agreeing to them.
Doctors can be held responsible for the additional harm you face, including the pain and suffering from these symptoms. You may also need additional medical care to deal with toxicity, drug interactions, allergies, or reversing the side effects of drugs you should not have been taking. All of this could require time away from work, thus causing lost wages as well.
Call Our Frederick Medication Error Lawyers Today
Call Rice Law’s medication error attorneys at (410) 694-7291 for a free evaluation of your potential case.