Florida Hospitals Owe Patients a Duty of Care
Hospitals routinely provide the medical care needed for a patient to get better. Unfortunately, these healthcare facilities don’t always live up to their responsibility of looking out for the safety, health, and well-being of vulnerable patients.
Hospital employees
The hospital can be held liable for the actions of any employee who causes a patient to sustain an injury as a result of negligence. For instance, the hospital can be held liable for the actions of an employed registered nurse who administers the wrong drug or dosage.
You may even be able to sue the physician if the hospital employee acted negligently while under the supervision of the physician. Based on this, if you sue the physician, the liability will not fall on the hospital. For instance, if a surgeon leaves a sponge or instrument inside the patient because of an attending nurse’s miscount, the nurse and surgeon will be held liable.
Non-employee medical care providers
Hospitals routinely work with doctors who are not formally employed. These doctors are termed independent contractors. The hospital may not be held liable for any error on the part of the doctor, but there are certain exceptions to this.
The hospital is required to clarify that the doctor is not on its payroll. In this situation, you may be able to sue the hospital for medical malpractice unless the error occurred in the emergency room.
What Damages Can Be Recovered?
You have the right to pursue both economic and non-economic damages, along with punitive damages. Non-economic damages may include:
- Pain and suffering
- Emotional distress
- Loss of enjoyment of life
- Loss of consortium
Florida medical malpractice laws had a cap on the amount of non-economic damages until 2017. This was termed unconstitutional and removed by the Supreme Court. So, in practice, now there is no cap for both non-economic and economic damages (which typically includes medical bills and lost wages, among other tangible expenses) for hospital malpractice claims in Florida.
