What happens if a dentist makes a mistake?
The Dangers of Dental Malpractice
We generally trust our dental care provider to take care of our teeth and successfully treat any problems. Although dental procedures are usually safe, malpractice still occurs. Dentists can make mistakes just like any other doctor.
During one recent decade, the National Practitioner Data Bank reports that among the 19,755 dentists in the United States, there were 16,337 medical malpractice payments and 13,772 adverse actions filed. An adverse action is a formal report not related to medical malpractice. Among the 3,131 dental hygienists, there were 49 medical malpractice payments and 3,676 adverse action reports. The medical malpractice reports only include paid claims.
Dental malpractice is a serious issue. It refers to an injury resulting from negligent dental care, failure to diagnose or treat a potentially dangerous condition, failure to diagnose or treat oral disease promptly, or any form of intentional misconduct by the dentist.
Dental malpractice tends to get less attention than other forms of medical malpractice, but it can have a significant impact on a person. Many health conditions are related to oral health issues, and dental care also affects the patient’s appearance.
If you’ve been injured by your dental care provider, talk to an experienced medical malpractice lawyer as soon as possible. You may have ground to file a dental malpractice claim.
Dental malpractice is a type of medical malpractice. To sue your dentist, you would need to show that they did not follow the standard of care required by the dental profession, and their failure caused your injury.
The terms negligence and standard of care often come up in dental malpractice. Negligence often describes actions that were not up to the standard of care. As used in most professional malpractice cases, the standard of care refers to the level and type of care that a competent health care professional, with a similar background and in the same medical community, would have provided under the same circumstances.
Chapter 33 of the Pennsylvania State Code, which deals with the State Board of Dentistry, requires a certain standard of care that a dentist must provide to a patient. Dental standards of care are also regulated by the FDA, as stated in a Department of Health & Human Services report. If the dentist fails to meet the standard of care, the patient may have a malpractice claim for dental negligence. A patient can not necessarily sue simply because they did not like the results. They can only bring a malpractice claim if the practitioner has failed to uphold the acceptable standard of care or has provided treatment that exceeds the patient’s informed consent. An experienced dental malpractice lawyer can advise if you have a claim.
Dental care may be anything from routine cleaning to complex surgeries. Consequently, there are many ways that treatment can go wrong.
Some include:
- Dentists have high standards of ethics and professional responsibility.
What are the most common dental malpractice claims?
CONTENT
Dental Infections.
Dental Injections and Injuries.
Adverse Drug Reactions.
Failure to Diagnose Oral Cancers.
TMJ or Other Orthognathic Injuries.
Legal Remedies with Dental Injuries Occur.
Filing a Dental Malpractice Claim or Lawsuit.
Consult with a Chicago Malpractice Attorney Today.
What are the best defenses against a malpractice suit dental?
The best defense for a dentist is complete and accurate dental records along with all radiographs. If the correct tooth was removed, the dental records and your consistent testimony are your best defense.
What happens if a dentist makes a mistake?
The Dangers of Dental Malpractice
We generally trust our dental care provider to take care of our teeth and successfully treat any problems. Although dental procedures are usually safe, malpractice still occurs. Dentists can make mistakes just like any other doctor.
During one recent decade, the National Practitioner Data Bank reports that among the 19,755 dentists in the United States, there were 16,337 medical malpractice payments and 13,772 adverse actions filed. An adverse action is a formal report not related to medical malpractice. Among the 3,131 dental hygienists, there were 49 medical malpractice payments and 3,676 adverse action reports. The medical malpractice reports only include paid claims.
Dental malpractice is a serious issue. It refers to an injury resulting from negligent dental care, failure to diagnose or treat a potentially dangerous condition, failure to diagnose or treat oral disease promptly, or any form of intentional misconduct by the dentist.
Dental malpractice tends to get less attention than other forms of medical malpractice, but it can have a significant impact on a person. Many health conditions are related to oral health issues, and dental care also affects the patient’s appearance.
If you’ve been injured by your dental care provider, talk to an experienced medical malpractice lawyer as soon as possible. You may have ground to file a dental malpractice claim.
Dental malpractice is a type of medical malpractice. To sue your dentist, you would need to show that they did not follow the standard of care required by the dental profession, and their failure caused your injury.
The terms negligence and standard of care often come up in dental malpractice. Negligence often describes actions that were not up to the standard of care. As used in most professional malpractice cases, the standard of care refers to the level and type of care that a competent health care professional, with a similar background and in the same medical community, would have provided under the same circumstances.
Chapter 33 of the Pennsylvania State Code, which deals with the State Board of Dentistry, requires a certain standard of care that a dentist must provide to a patient. Dental standards of care are also regulated by the FDA, as stated in a Department of Health & Human Services report. If the dentist fails to meet the standard of care, the patient may have a malpractice claim for dental negligence. A patient can not necessarily sue simply because they did not like the results. They can only bring a malpractice claim if the practitioner has failed to uphold the acceptable standard of care or has provided treatment that exceeds the patient’s informed consent. An experienced dental malpractice lawyer can advise if you have a claim.
Dental care may be anything from routine cleaning to complex surgeries. Consequently, there are many ways that treatment can go wrong.
Some include:
- Dentists have high standards of ethics and professional responsibility.
What is the basic for most medical malpractice claims?
Medical malpractice law in the United States is derived from English common law, and was developed by rulings in various state courts. Medical malpractice lawsuits are a relatively common occurrence in the United States. The legal system is designed to encourage extensive discovery and negotiations between adversarial parties with the goal of resolving the dispute without going to jury trial. The injured patient must show that the physician acted negligently in rendering care, and that such negligence resulted in injury. To do so, four legal elements must be proven: (1) a professional duty owed to the patient; (2) breach of such duty; (3) injury caused by the breach; and (4) resulting damages. Money damages, if awarded, typically take into account both actual economic loss and noneconomic loss, such as pain and suffering.
The concept that every person who enters into a learned profession undertakes to bring to the exercise of a reasonable degree of care and skill dates back to the laws of ancient Rome and England. Writings on medical responsibility can be traced back to 2030 BC when the Code of Hammurabi provided that “If the doctor has treated a gentlemen with a lancet of bronze and has caused the gentleman to die, or has opened an abscess of the eye for a gentleman with a bronze lancet, and has caused the loss of the gentleman’s eye, one shall cut off his hands [18].”
Under Roman law, medical malpractice was a recognized wrong. Around 1200 AD, Roman law was expanded and introduced to continental Europe. After the Norman conquest of 1066, English common law was developed, and during the reign of Richard Coeur de Lion at the close of the 12th century, records were kept in the Court of Common Law and the Plea Rolls. These records provide an unbroken line of medical malpractice decisions, all the way to modern times. One early medical malpractice case from England, for example, held that both a servant and his master could sue for damages against a doctor who had treated the servant and made him more ill by employing “unwholesome medicine [4].” In 1532, during the reign of Charles V, a law was passed that required the opinion of medical men to be taken formally in every case of violent death; this was the precursor to requiring expert testimony from a member of the profession in medical negligence claims, to establish the standard of care.
In the United States, medical malpractice suits first appeared with regularity beginning in the 1800s [3]. However, before the 1960s, legal claims for medical malpractice were rare, and had little impact on the practice of medicine [21]. Since the 1960s the frequency of medical malpractice claims has increased; and today, lawsuits filed by aggrieved patients alleging malpractice by a physician are relatively common in the United States. One survey of specialty arthroplasty surgeons reported that more than 70% of respondents had been sued at least once for medical malpractice during their career [23].