Of all personal injury claims, medical malpractice is the hardest to prove. One reason for this is that unintended injuries sometimes occur during medical treatment, even when the physician acted properly. Modern medicine is also complex and highly specialized, making it even more difficult to identify clear liability. Despite all this, you and your medical malpractice attorney can still build a robust and successful case in the following ways. 
How to Build a Strong Case With Your Medical Malpractice Attorney
Gather Extensive Evidence
There are many different kinds of medical malpractice claims, including misdiagnosis, treatment errors, surgical errors, anesthesia errors, birth injuries, and hospital infections. Find out more here about the various medical malpractice claims. In all cases, winning compensation requires you to prove four things: the physician owed you a duty of care; they breached this expected duty of care through negligence; this negligence resulted in harm to you; and this harm caused all your injuries and damages.
Proving negligence tends to be the toughest part, as when adverse events occur during medical treatment, only 27% of those adverse events are caused by negligence. This gives the defendant firm footing from which to dispute your claim that they breached a duty of care. Proving that the negligence caused the full extent of your injuries can also be an uphill struggle. Both require a mountain of evidence, which is the key to success in these types of cases.
Examples of Evidence Required
The evidence for each type of medical malpractice case can vary a great deal. In many instances, you’ll need your own medical records and the medical history that your physician should have been aware of. You’ll also need any relevant prescriptions and diagnostic test results.
You’ll need records of the physician’s previous patients, hospital policies and regulations, and hospital records surrounding the event, including communications between doctors and nurses. Studies and statistical information from similar cases, plus accepted industry protocols and procedures for treating your condition, might also be required. All of this evidence, and much more, is hard to acquire without an experienced medical malpractice lawyer conducting an in-depth investigation and gathering evidence for you.
Retain Medical Expert Witnesses
Expert witnesses often play an essential role in medical malpractice cases. There are two main purposes for an expert witness.
Expert Witness Consultants
As previously mentioned, modern medicine is extremely specialized. Understanding and proving your case might require a detailed analysis of anesthesiology, musculoskeletal radiology, endovascular surgical neuroradiology, or some other narrow and sophisticated field. To the average layman, such niche areas of medicine seem shrouded in an impenetrable fog of technical procedure, equipment, and jargon.
Expert witness consultants can help to clear away the fog. These licensed practicing medical professionals assist you during the investigatory and evidence-gathering stage, helping you analyze and understand exactly how a duty of care was breached.
Expert Witness Testimony
Not only must you understand clearly what occurred in your medical malpractice case, but you must also explain it persuasively to a jury. This often requires expert witness testimony.
You might retain a surgical procedure expert, a pharmaceutical expert, a nursing expert, or any other specialist expert. They can explain clearly how the defendant acted outside of the accepted standard of care and caused your injuries. Other kinds of expert witnesses, such as mental health experts or occupational experts, might also help prove the full value of your economic and non-economic damages.
Prepare To File a Lawsuit
Half of all medical malpractice cases involve a lawsuit, so chances are high that you’ll need to take things to court. However, despite this relatively high litigation rate, only 4.5% of cases result in a trial verdict.
The vast majority of medical malpractice cases are resolved out of court, usually with a settlement payout from the defendant’s insurance company. But to attain satisfactory compensation almost always requires a willingness to go all the way and win over a jury.
Hire a Specialist Medical Malpractice Lawyer
The strongest medical malpractice cases are built with a court-ready lawyer who has experience trying and winning similar cases in court. Given the unique complexities of medical malpractice claims, it’s rarely a good idea to hire a generalist personal injury attorney.
A specialist medical malpractice lawyer will already have a strong understanding of the laws, policies, regulations, and accepted standards of care in different fields of medicine. They’ll have ready access to expert witnesses in various medical fields. And they’ll be prepared for the long, hard battle that medical malpractice frequently is compared to a simple slip-and-fall or fender-bender car accident case.
Now that you know how to build a solid medical malpractice case, you’re ready to take on the negligent party and win a fair settlement. Medical malpractice is difficult to prove, but with the right strategy and an experienced attorney fighting your corner, it can be done.
