When Can an Emergency Room or Urgent Care Center Be Sued?

Whether you’re going to the emergency room or an urgent care center for medical treatment, you expect the medical professionals to provide you with care to help you feel better. When someone caring for you acts negligently, your health can suffer. If this has happened to you, there are options for your future. An emergency room or urgent care center can be sued for harming you. Golden Law Office can help you with your claim.

Emergency Room Vs. Urgent Care Center

While both emergency rooms and urgent care centers can provide medical care, they are equipped to handle different kinds of situations. Emergency rooms can treat everything, but are most able to treat major injuries and illnesses. If someone is in critical condition, they need to head to an emergency room.

Urgent care centers are for minor injuries and illnesses. If someone has a cough, fever, or minor wounds, an urgent care center can treat them. Their presence also means that those with less serious injuries or illnesses won’t all need to go to the emergency room and those working there won’t be overwhelmed.

It’s also important to know that patients should seek the correct place of care. If they arrive at an urgent care center with a life-threatening condition, the center will likely not be able to treat it as they would in an emergency room. If you went to an urgent care center when you experienced something serious, then you may not be able to hold them accountable for any injuries you sustained there.

While both of these places are supposed to provide care for people, they can still cause harm when someone makes an error. Let’s take a look at the issues that can arise in these places.

Medical Negligence Can Occur in Any Health Care Center

In an emergency room and urgent care center, typically patients are seen in order. However, if someone is exhibiting symptoms of a dangerous health condition that needs immediate treatment, they need to be seen first. For example, if someone comes to the emergency room with chest pains, they may be at risk of a heart attack and will need treatment.

If medical professionals miss these symptoms and the patient has a heart attack that could have been prevented, the patient may be able to hold them accountable due to failure to diagnose or missed diagnosis.

Urgent care centers can exhibit negligence as well. If medical professionals agree to treat you and their care results in your condition worsening or suffering further injury when they could have prevented this from happening, then you should seek your legal options immediately.

Other types of medical malpractice include:

• Delayed Diagnosis. A negligent doctor may have not properly diagnosed your condition when you first went to them with symptoms. This delay in reaching your diagnosis could have allowed the condition to worsen.
• Medication Error. If you’re given medication that reacts to another medication you’re currently taking or you’re allergic to, then you can suffer serious injuries. Medical professionals should know from your records what medication you can and cannot take.
• Failure to Order/Misread Tests. If you’re exhibiting symptoms where doctors need more information and they should have conducted tests but did not, then you may be able to hold them accountable for medical malpractice. If you did undergo tests but they misread the results or missed something that other doctors with similar training and education would have caught, then this may be grounds for a lawsuit as well.

All these situations above could have led to you or a loved one suffering from further harm because of a medical professional’s negligence. While these types of cases can be complicated, you don’t have to go through them on your own.

A medical malpractice lawyer from Golden Law Office will help you navigate the legal process. We understand that suing an emergency room or urgent care center is a major undertaking, but we’ll be at your side every step of the way.

Golden Law Office Can Fight for Your Rights

Suffering because of a negligent medical professional can cause possibly life-threatening situations. Recovering from this can include astronomical medical bills and a long recovery time. You may feel like your life has been put on hold, but you’re still dealing with significant financial losses. Our lawyers are here to help you get the compensation you deserve.

Golden Law Office will review your case, determine if medical malpractice occurred, and help you recover for the injuries and losses the medical professional’s negligence caused you. To get started on your case, get in touch with our office today for a free case evaluation.

Golden Law is a local, Kentucky Law Firm, attorneys/lawyers in Fayette County, Kentucky, working in the fields of personal injury, auto accidents, car and truck wrecks; medical malpractice: doctors, hospitals & nursing homes; senior living abuse: neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse, dehydration, bedsores, catastrophic injuries, and broken bones. If you are considering a lawsuit, call us at 859.469.5000 for a free consultation. We are located at 771 Corporate Dr. Suite 800/ Lexington, Kentucky 40503. We handle cases all over the Commonwealth of Kentucky. We have represented and trained people in major insurance companies & major trucking companies. We have first hand experience and know the ‘inside of the insurance business’ … that’s a distinction that no other law firm can make. We’re Your Advocate. Dale Golden, Laraclay Parker.