Medical Malpractice and You — What You Need to Know Before You Subject Yourself to Treatment

Outside of a few very obvious scenarios, most Americans don’t know as much as they should about how to identify medical malpractice. This is a tragic oversight, considering medical negligence is the third leading cause of death in Americans today, trailing only heart disease and cancer.

One of the most responsible things a person can do, then, is prepare themselves for the possibility that this can happen to them. When one considers the sort of birth injury statistics and medical malpractice statistics gathered by industry experts, it is completely feasible to assert that every American should know how to identify medical malpractice should it ever happen to them.

So, we know how detrimental medical malpractice can be, but how often does it occur? How often do birth injuries naturally occur, even with perfectly administered health care?

According to experts, seven babies out of every 1,000 will suffer a birth injury such as Erb’s palsy or cerebral palsy, which is the most common birth injury among children. And that’s just one affliction — when bringing frequency of occurrences into the picture, the statistics paint an even more harrowing image.

On average, there are 28,000 birth injuries per year in the United States. That breaks down to 2,333 per month, 538 per week, and three per hour. That’s correct — three people will be born every single hour with a birth injury that may or may not be the direct result of medical negligence. This takes into account all types of birth injuries.

So, what to do when a birth injury occurs? You’ll want to immediately do your best to familiarize yourself with a medical malpractice lawyer, or, at least, contact one provisionally. These professionals know the birth rates associated with each type of birth injury, and the common signs of each one, so they can easily determine whether or not the injury you’ve brought to them was the fault of chance, or a medical professional.

If some of the above seems like it’s a little numbers-heavy or tricky to remember, it’s prudent to at least keep in mind the fact that medical negligence is the third leading killer of Americans. That’s hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of incidents per year, so there truly is no excuse for not knowing what to do should you find yourself in this situation.