Faxton St. Lukes Hospital

Faxton St. Luke's Healthcare is a not-for-profit healthcare system with two campuses that provide services to those living in Central New York. It has eight primary care offices, but also offers surgeries and houses neuroscience groups. More than 2900 people work at Faxton St. Luke's, and its yearly operating budget is around $340 million. If you went to Faxton St. Luke's for medical care and were injured in the course of care by somebody who worked there, you may have a claim for damages. These are challenging claims to win, but a seasoned Utica medical malpractice attorney can help you pursue your case.

Medical professionals can make serious mistakes that cause catastrophic injuries or untimely deaths. Often there are emotional and physical consequences to the injuries and deaths caused by doctors, and those mistakes may affect the rest of people's lives. Sometimes people aren't sure whether what they experienced at the hands of professionals was medical malpractice, and it's true that not all mistakes count as medical malpractice for which you can recover damages. Sometimes, those harmed by medical malpractice wait too long to consult a medical malpractice attorney, which results in an expiration of the statute of limitations.

If you suspect you were harmed by medical malpractice, you usually only have 2 1/2 years from the date of the allegedly negligent conduct that caused your injuries to file a medical malpractice claim. Accordingly, it is wise to consult an experienced medical malpractice attorney as soon as you can.

Some common kinds of medical malpractice are delayed diagnosis (or failure to diagnose at all), misdiagnosis, failure to treat or failure to provide proper treatment, surgical errors and birth injuries. A delayed diagnosis might occur, for example, where a family care physician failed to conduct a proper differential diagnosis when you first came in with your symptoms, and therefore didn't diagnose you right away. A misdiagnosis could occur under many different circumstances, such as where improper tests were conducted, or where the test or imaging results were misinterpreted. Sometimes a doctor doesn't keep up with the professional standards as well as he or she should and provides a treatment that isn't in keeping with the current standards of the community. Surgical errors can include obvious errors like amputating the wrong limb, or they can involve something more complicated, such as failing to properly monitor breathing after anesthesia is administered.

Not all errors made at Faxton St. Luke’s or other hospitals surrounding Utica can be considered medical malpractice for which you can recover damages. Medical malpractice occurs when a health care provider is negligent. Negligence in the context of medical malpractice happens if a doctor deviates from the accepted practices and standards of the medical community and the result is injury to or the death of the patient. When this happens, a health care provider can be held accountable for their actions in a medical malpractice lawsuit.

To prove medical malpractice, you need to show it was more likely than not: you were owed a professional standard of care, but your doctor’s conduct fell below the professional standard of care, and this actually and proximately caused injuries and damages. Often medical malpractice claims hinge on the expert that is chosen to provide testimony on the professional standard of care, which failures constituted a breach in that professional standard of care, and causation. An experienced medical malpractice lawyer can help you line up a knowledgeable expert to testify in your case.

When a patient can establish liability, he or she can recover for past and future losses including medical expenses, pain and suffering, and lost income. When a patient dies as a result of medical malpractice, his or her family may be able to recover wrongful death damages.

If you go to see a doctor at Faxton-Luke's Hospital, you trust that the doctor will accurately diagnose you and provide treatment in line with professional standards. However, doctors and nurses do make mistakes, and the results can be disastrous for a patient. At DeFrancisco & Falgiatano, we represent patients injured in and around Utica and at Faxton St. Luke’s Hospital. Call us at 833-200-2000 or contact us via our online form.