Legal news reports that a jury has returned a $20 million medical malpractice verdict against a local hospital. According to reports, the civil lawsuit was filed after an inpatient received an overdose of non-prescribed opiates. The woman had an adverse reaction following the overdose, and died a few months later as a result, the complaint asserts. The jury agreed with the plaintiff and returned a verdict on behalf of the family.
Medication errors are one of the most common types of preventable medical malpractice. Medication errors are defined as "any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate use or patient harm. " This can be either errors in the actual writing of a prescription and errors made in evaluating what to prescribe.
Statistics vary on just how widespread prescribing errors are – with some reports concluding that errors occur in 5% of prescriptions, and others putting this number at 81%. Either way, the results can be serious. The reasons behind prescription errors are varied.
The most common causes of prescription errors are based on human errors such as prescribing drugs to the wrong patient, or prescribing the wrong drug, the wrong dose, giving the wrong directions, or creating the wrong dosage formulation.
If a patient suffers harm as the result of a prescription error, he or she may be found liable in a medical malpractice lawsuit.
For more information, or if you believe that you or a loved one was harmed as the result of a prescription error, please contact the experienced and compassionate Los Angeles medical malpractice lawyers at Bostwick & Peterson, LLP for an immediate consultation.