Common Factors Affecting the Settlement of Medical Negligence Claim

This article will highlight common factors that are supposed to affect settlement of medical negligence claim.

If you feel that your doctor was negligent in your treatment and you are suffering damages due to his negligence, you can ask for medical negligence compensation and if he doesn’t agree on mutual settlement, you can go ahead and sue him/her to get paid for his negligence. Remember, it is not obvious that you may file a claim and will win the case, so make sure to take some initial steps to ensure your success. You should study how you can strengthen your medical negligence claim. First of all make sure that the medical error is adequate reason to file a claim. Once you are sure about it, you can move ahead to sue.

There are several factors that are supposed to affect a medical negligence settlement. The first factor is the ability of claimant to verify his claim and the degree of damages he may be suffering from. Plus, the expenses made by the patient or his family can also affect the settlement of the claim. For instance, medical bills, lost earning or income can affect estimation of total settlement amount. However, a willful negligence from the doctor or extent of negligence will also influence a clinical negligence settlement.  

Ability of the claimant is very important to add to the worth of his case. To win medical negligence settlement, the claimant has to show some essential things including:

• He needs to authenticate that he had to suffer some sort of damages and the defendant is the reason of that injury
• He also has to prove that he is suffering from that damage due to negligence or ineffectiveness of the defendant

If the patient fails to show the above mentioned points to the jury, he is likely to lose the case and medical negligence compensation.

Amount of medical negligence compensation may also be affected by the expenses the patient had to make or is supposed to make in future. Most commonly medical negligence claims include compensation for:

• Medical bills
• Legal costs
• Money spent to cover lost earnings or incomes from complainant’s business
• Miscellaneous expenses made to win medical negligence settlement

Some punitive damages are also one of the factors that can affect settlement of a medical negligence claim. Patient can win extra compensation amount that may go beyond actual injuries. For instance, if a patient gets injured due to negligence, the defendant may have to pay against disciplinary injuries as punishment. However, punitive damages are awarded as per the decision of judge when they believe that the defendant was intentionally negligent.

However, if the plaintiff succeeds to demonstrate that the defendant happened to harm him because of medical negligence compensation, some other factors are also there to affect the compensation he might be awarded. For instance, the severity of injury would play an important role in estimation of settlement amount. A moderately injured patient will receive less than a person who become seriously disabled or eternally disfigured due to the act of medical negligence.