Medical Malpractice Lawyer in Corpus Christi
Our medical malpractice lawyer in Corpus Christi represents clients who have been harmed by healthcare negligence.
Whether you have been harmed by a doctor, surgeon, hospital, nurse, or nursing home caregiver, we can help you protect your rights and get the justice you deserve.
Facts about Corpus Christi
Corpus Christi is a coastal town on the Gulf of Mexico situated on Nueces Bay and Corpus Christi Bay. It is the county seat of Nueces County, but also resides in Aransas, Kleberg, and San Patricio Counties. The population of Corpus Christi is a healthy 325,000. It is the eighth largest city in Texas, and is a popular destination for tourism and economy. The population of Corpus Christi is comprised of:
- Caucasian – 33.3%
- Hispanic – 62%
- African American – 4.3%
- Asian 1.8%
The Port of Corpus Christi is the fifth-largest port in the United States. It is a hub for oil and agriculture. The Naval Air Station Corpus Christi is the largest employer in the city, with more than 6,200 civilian jobs. Corpus Christi is home to the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi campus, as well as other universities and community colleges. It is also the home of the Texas State Aquarium and Mustang Island State Park.
Corpus Christi has a large healthcare presence also, with CHRISTUS Spohn Health System offering more than 5,400 jobs to the metropolitan area. Corpus Christi is also part of the Texas Healthy Communities Program, which seeks to improve healthcare through programs, policy, and local initiatives.
Medical Malpractice Lawyer in Corpus Christi
Medical malpractice impacts the lives of millions of people every year. Victims and their loved ones often find the aftermath of malpractice or negligence to be overwhelming. Not only is there physical and emotional pain, but families also often experience a significant change in their financial stability.
When you are injured as a result of medical malpractice or negligence, you may find yourself facing significant medical expenses, lost wages, and sometimes ongoing or life-long expenses. That is why you need legal guidance from a medical malpractice lawyer in Corpus Christi.
Medical Malpractice Cases We Handle
- Missed or delayed diagnosis
- Maternal or fetal birth injuries
- Anesthesia errors
- Surgical errors
- Medication errors
- Nursing home abuse
- Defective medical devices
Healthcare negligence is a serious problem, and victims need to know that they have options.
Medical malpractice is a complicated legal matter. There are often various parties involved in the case, including those you believe are responsible, their insurance companies, and their legal team. As you build your case, you can guarantee that the other side is also building a case with the goal of proving that you are not a victim. These cases require a great deal of research, gathering information, and interviewing expert witnesses.
Yes, these cases are complicated, but at MedMalFirm.com, this is our passion and we know how to get results for our clients. Our medical malpractice lawyer in Corpus Christi has the skills and resources you need to get the compensation you deserve.
Birth Injury Lawyer in Corpus Christi
Birth injuries occur for numerous reasons. Sometimes they are the result of birth defects, complications, or unforeseeable maternal illness. Other times, they are the result of substandard care. In fact, the most common cause of birth injuries is a negligent healthcare provider.
When a doctor or nurse fails to properly monitor you and your child, mishandles labor, or is too forceful when delivering, you and your child can experience devastating injuries.
Negligent healthcare providers should be held accountable for their actions.
Healthcare providers are required to follow certain standards of care. That includes how they manage labor and delivery, and how they make decisions about treatment or care. When healthcare providers deviate from these standards they put your life at risk, and violate your right to quality and safe healthcare.
Examples of Birth Injuries Caused by Negligence
While some injuries and poor outcomes during birth cannot be attributed to negligence, there are an alarming number of families affected by medical negligence each year. During labor and delivery, there are a variety of ways that a healthcare provider may be negligent, including:
- Failure to order a Cesarean (c-section) in emergent situations
- Improper or lack of monitoring fetal vital signs
- Failure to monitor maternal vital signs
- Undiagnosed or untreated maternal infections
- Ineffective communication between healthcare team
- Failure to properly monitor bilirubin levels after birth
What Can I do if My Child has Been Injured?
In addition to exploring your options for the best healthcare possible, you may also find it helpful to seek legal guidance. You and your child have the right to quality healthcare that meets the standards of the medical practice, and the law. When these standards are not met, your legal rights may have been violated and your child may have been injured as a result. This is never acceptable.
At MedMalFirm.com, our medical malpractice lawyer in Corpus Christi has successfully litigated numerous cases involving birth injuries, medical malpractice, and medical negligence. Our team of legal resources has the knowledge and skill your family needs to pursue justice.
Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer in Corpus Christi
Everyone has heard the shocking and horrifying stories of elderly men and women neglected, swindled, or abused by unscrupulous nursing home workers. It is a crime so shocking, it doesn’t seem possible that it could impact our own families. The truth is, however, millions of families live this nightmare.
Nursing home abuse can be emotional, physical, sexual, or financial. How can you recognize the signs of nursing home abuse?
Communication with your loved one is your best weapon against abuse and neglect. Check in with them frequently about their experience, about the staff, and about their health and overall mood. After all, you know your loved one best. If they start to act strangely or simply unlike themselves, be concerned.
Even if your loved one has diminished mental capacity and can no longer communicate with you, there are certain telltale signs of abuse you should be aware of.
Signs of Nursing Home Abuse
- Dehydration– Keeping residents hydrated is a fundamental responsibility of the staff. Though it might be difficult to accomplish with some residents struggling with dementia or other conditions, it is still the job of the staff to make sure this basic need is met. If something so basic and important is neglected, you can be sure it is only the tip of the iceberg.
- Bedsores– There is no reason your loved one should ever have bedsores. It is a basic standard of care for immobile patients and this single concern alone could be grounds for a claim of abuse.
- Injuries– Though accidents can happen frequent falls, bruises, cuts, or burns are cause for serious concern. Any broken bones are a serious red flag and should be met with suspicion if they can’t be justified with a verifiable explanation. Similarly, injuries that develop into an infection or sepsis may be a sign that your loved one is not getting proper medical attention.
- Exploitation– It is inappropriate for nursing home staff to accept financial help or expensive gifts from residents, but it is sadly a common occurrence. Some swindlers even go so far as to steal your family member’s identity or open financial account with them jointly. This is abuse and should be stopped right away.
Responsibilities of Nursing Homes
Federal Nursing Home Reform Law requires facilities to provide quality, safe care that meets federal and state guidelines. Nursing home failures should not be allowed to continue. What Nursing Homes Should Provide:
- Respect, dignity, and privacy
- Access to appropriate medical care
- Freedom from restraints
- Choice of care, activities, providers, and schedules
- A clean, safe living environment
- Ability to manage one’s own finances and belongings
Pressure Ulcer Lawyer in Corpus Christi
The care providers in hospitals, nursing homes, and long-term care facilities are expected to provide a basic standard of care to their patients. For bed-bound or wheelchair-bound patients, part of this standard includes regular and attentive repositioning to avoid the formation of pressure ulcers.
What is a Pressure Ulcer?
A pressure ulcer – also called a bedsore, or decubitus ulcer – is an wound that forms when an individual’s skin presses against a bed or wheelchair in the same spot for an extended period of time. The blood flow to the skin is interrupted, causing the skin to die and break apart.
Pressure ulcers are painful, slow-forming injuries that simply should never occur.
Long before a bedsore is a painful open wound, it is an irritated patch of skin left pressed against a surface for far too long. For experienced and caring staff, a Stage 1 pressure ulcer should be easy to spot. From the moment a pressure ulcer is suspected, responsible caregivers should make every effort to halt the progression of the wound. Failure to do so constitutes neglect.
Stages of Pressure Ulcers
There are four stages of pressure ulcers, each with their own symptoms. The higher the stage, the more severe the wound is. A basic overview of each stage includes the following:
- 1: Redness, discomfort, and warm to touch.
- 2: A shallow open wound that is tender and painful.
- 3: A deep wound extending into fatty tissue that is painful and may smell or ooze.
- 4: A wound extending to the muscle or bone that may be necrotic or infected.
There are also some wounds that are so severe they are considered unstagable. An unstageable wound is one that is covered in tissue and pus, and may be heavily infected. In other words, it is so severe that doctors cannot adequately stage it using general guidelines.
Does a Pressure Ulcer Mean my Loved One is Being Neglected?
There are very few scenarios in which the formation of a pressure ulcer is not a credible claim of neglect. It should not be assumed that a bed-bound patient will eventually develop a pressure ulcer. However, this type of injury is preventable when the patient receives proper and attentive care. Do not be deceived into thinking bedsores are a regrettable but unavoidable fact of limited mobility.
Just as your family member deserves a sanitary environment, nutritious food to eat, plenty of water, and respectful treatment, they also deserve to be diligently cared for to prevent injuries or illness. When pressure ulcers do form, they often indicate other standards of care have not been met. At that point, a Corpus Christi pressure ulcer attorney should review the facts of your loved one’s experience at the hands of their caregivers.
Pressure Ulcers are Preventable and Families Should Take Action
Bedsores are one of the most easily preventable injuries that can affect a hospital patient or nursing home resident. However, if they are not properly diagnosed and treated, they can become one of the most painful injuries and can spread infection quickly around the body. Bedsores are a clear and undeniable sign of neglect.
How to Keep Hospital and Nursing Home Patients Healthy
- Ensure that patients are repositioned in regular intervals
- Provide adequate food and hydration
- Use appropriate mattress pads, pillows, or overlays
- Make sure that patient medications are administered properly
Pressure ulcers are considered preventable in the vast majority of cases. With around 3 million Americans suffering from these injuries every year, it is clear that more oversight, training, and prevention strategies are needed.
At MedMalFirm.com, our medical malpractice lawyer in Corpus Christi has the resources you need to pursue justice for your loved one. Our team understands the nature of pressure ulcers, and we know how bring those at fault to justice. If you or a loved one has developed a pressure ulcer, take action. You may be entitled to compensation for the harm you suffered due to substandard care.
Bowel Perforation Lawyer in Corpus Christi
Surgical procedures all have certain risks. However, those risks should not include a surgical error or mistake made by the operating room team. If you are suffering a bowel perforation after having abdominal surgery, contact a medical malpractice lawyer in Corpus Christi. At MedMalFirm.com, we can help you find out more about your legal rights.
What is a Bowel Perforation?
A bowel perforation is a cut or tear in the large or small intestine. The condition is a medical emergency because the perforation allows fecal matter, bacteria, and partially digested food to escape the intestines and contaminate the abdominal organs.
The naturally occurring bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract poses no harm if it remains safely within the intestines, but it should never interact with other organs. Intestinal bacteria can cause deadly infection.
Sometimes victims of medical malpractice develop a bowel obstruction through no medical neglect, but rather they suffer neglect when their medical providers fail to diagnose and treat the symptoms of a bowel perforation.
Who is At Risk for Bowel Perforation?
- Diverticulitis Patients
- Colonoscopy Patients
- Appendectomy Patients
- Gallbladder/Gall Stone Patients
- Hysterectomy Patients
- Hernia Patients
- Crohn’s Disease Patients
Just because you are at risk for certain complications does not mean that you should settle for any explanation. If you are injured by a healthcare provider, you should certainly demand answers.
Symptoms of a Bowel Perforation
The symptoms of a bowel perforation begin gradually and slowly become worse until discomfort makes it obvious the victim is experiencing a medical emergency. A tear or perforation anywhere in the gastrointestinal tract is an emergency because a breach of any size can release deadly fecal bacteria into the abdominal cavity.
The signs of a bowel perforation may be barely noticeable at first and can include:
- Severe Abdominal Pain
- Chills
- Fever
- Nausea
- Vomiting
Diagnosing a bowel perforation in a timely manner is vitally important. Every minute counts when the abdominal organs are at risk of infection from intestinal bacteria.
All postoperative patients who have undergone abdominal surgery should be monitored for the symptoms of a bowel perforation. If their medical team observes the symptoms, the physician will probably order an X-ray or perhaps a CT scan. To assess the severity of the perforation, the doctor may order a blood test to check for signs of infection and blood loss.
Treatment of a Bowel Perforation
The treatment for a bowel perforation is almost always surgical. The surgical repair most often associated with bowel perforations is a colostomy. A colostomy drastically reduces the patient’s quality of life because it requires the use of a colostomy bag attached to the outside of the body. This bag helps to eliminate the patient’s waste until the perforation in the intestine can heal.
Sometimes the bowel is too badly damaged to ever allow for the reversal of the colostomy procedure, which means the victim must suffer the permanent use of a colostomy bag.
What are the Complications of a Bowel Perforation?
The potentially deadly complications of a bowel perforation include:
If you or someone you love is suffering complications like these because of a bowel perforation, speak to a Corpus Christi bowel perforation attorney.
When to Contact a Medical Malpractice Lawyer in Corpus Christi
There are many ways that a skilled medical malpractice lawyer in Corpus Christi can help you. A lawyer with a wealth of medical malpractice experience and resources can review your treatment history and tell you whether you have an actionable claim.
At MedMalFirm.com, our team will diligently review every medical record and bill generated by your injury to learn exactly what happened. We can even present well-respected expert physician witnesses to testify about the ways in which your treatment failed to measure up.
Find out more about your legal rights and how we can help you by calling 877-887-4850. You can also get started with a free consultation by completing our online contact form.