What are the most common dental malpractice claims?
Malpractice cases are not limited to medical physicians. Dentists are equally accountable for their treatments, and they are required to provide their patients with the expected standard of care. When a dentist, orthodontist, periodontist, or orthodontic surgeon injures a patient by deviating from that standard, he or she is liable for injuries caused.
It is important that patients understand what constitutes dental malpractice, and what steps they must take to file a claim against a dental professional. Most importantly, anyone who suspects they are the victim of dental malpractice should contact a dental malpractice lawyer for a free case evaluation.
Anytime a dentist or other dental professional commits an error and causes a catastrophic injury to their patient, they should pay for their wrongful actions.
There are four criteria that need to be present in order to make a medical negligence claim:
- Misdiagnosis or misinterpreting test results
- Failing to take routine X-rays
- Prescribing the wrong medications
- Making an error during dental surgery
Each specialty in dentistry carries its own set of risks. Each dental professional has a duty of care to each patient. We will investigate your case and confer with reputable dental professionals to determine if the healthcare provider treated you with an adequate level of care.
Medical malpractice claims have to be made within a certain amount of time. This “clock” is known as a statute of limitations. According to Illinois statute 735 ILCS 5/13-212, a claimant (patient filing a claim) only has two years after the date of discovering the injury to file a claim. The law defines the date of discovery as being when the patient had actual or constructive knowledge of the injury. Constructive knowledge implies that a person of reasonable intelligence should have been aware of the injury.
The claimant will not be allowed to file a claim after the two years have passed, even if they have strong evidence that would allow a court to rule in their favor.
An exception to this law is when the patient is under the age of 18. For minor patients, a claim may be filed for eight years following the trauma, but not later than the patient’s 22nd birthday.
In order to recover compensation in a dental malpractice claim, there are a few different elements that your attorney will work to demonstrate.
In order to provide dental malpractice, you and your attorney will work to gather evidence, speak with experts in the field, and put together a summary that outlines the injuries suffered and compensation requested for damages.
In the event that you suffer an injury from a dentist who is performing work on your mouth, you could have an expensive recovery. There are several different types of compensation that you might receive if you pursue a dental malpractice case. These often include recoverin.
What if a dentist makes a mistake?
Whilst most dentists provide a consistently high standard of care to their patients, sometimes dental mistakes can happen when you are undergoing treatment. If you have been injured or suffered significantly as a result of a dentist’s mistake in England or Wales, you may be eligible to make a claim for compensation. We have outlined some of the most common mistakes dentists make that could mean you might be able to make a compensation claim for dental negligence.
Compared to the number of people who are successfully treated by dentists every year without issue, the number of patients who do find that their dentist has made a mistake with their care is very small. However, these errors do happen and sometimes the patient can be injured as a result or may require extensive future dental work to fix the problem. If a dentist makes a mistake and the patient is significantly or permanently damaged as a result, it can affect every area of their life.
Some of the areas we see mistakes being made by dentists can include:
- If you are found to have a dental or oral condition that is not properly diagnosed by your dentist and gets significantly worse as a result, you might be able to make a compensation claim.
- If your dentist caused trauma to your teeth, gums, jaw, face when treating you, perhaps when mishandling equipment, you may be able to claim compensation for your injury.
- If your dentist doesn’t properly explain a procedure or treatment plan, your options or the risks of each choice so that you can give informed consent, this may be considered as dental negligence and you may be able to make a claim.
If you think that your dentist has done any of the above and it has resulted in an injury to you or significant pain and suffering, we can offer free initial advice on whether you might have a claim for compensation due to a dentist’s mistake.
Mr M suffered intense pain in his jaw and headaches following an avoidable extraction.
Loss of sleep due to the pain
£9,000 Awarded in compensation
A MAN FROM THE SOUTH EAST HAS LOST HIS TOOTH AND UNDERWENT UNESSECARY ROOT CANAL TREAMENT AFTER HIS DENTIST FAILED TO SPOT TOOTH DECAY.
Mr L lost his tooth after his dentist failed to spot and treat tooth decay.
A woman from the east of England suffered an avoidable period of pain and suffering as a result of infection and suffered an avoidable repeat root canal treatment.
Ms C lost a tooth and will lose another tooth in the future.
“All that remains is for me to thank you for your kind words, for your continued efforts, for providing complete transparency and clarity when required, and also for your patience. I wish you nothing but”.
What are the most common dental malpractice claims?
Malpractice cases are not limited to medical physicians. Dentists are equally accountable for their treatments, and they are required to provide their patients with the expected standard of care. When a dentist, orthodontist, periodontist, or orthodontic surgeon injures a patient by deviating from that standard, he or she is liable for injuries caused.
It is important that patients understand what constitutes dental malpractice, and what steps they must take to file a claim against a dental professional. Most importantly, anyone who suspects they are the victim of dental malpractice should contact a dental malpractice lawyer for a free case evaluation.
Anytime a dentist or other dental professional commits an error and causes a catastrophic injury to their patient, they should pay for their wrongful actions.
There are four criteria that need to be present in order to make a medical negligence claim:
- Common ways to deviate from the acceptable standard of care may include: a misdiagnosis or misinterpreting test results, failing to take routine X-rays, prescribing the wrong medications, or making an error during dental surgery.
Each specialty in dentistry carries its own set of risks. Each dental professional has a duty of care to each patient. We will investigate your case and confer with reputable dental professionals to determine if the healthcare provider treated you with an adequate level of care.
Medical malpractice claims have to be made within a certain amount of time. This “clock” is known as a statute of limitations. According to Illinois statute 735 ILCS 5/13-212, a claimant (patient filing a claim) only has two years after the date of discovering the injury to file a claim. The law defines the date of discovery as being when the patient had actual or constructive knowledge of the injury. Constructive knowledge implies that a person of reasonable intelligence should have been aware of the injury.
The claimant will not be allowed to file a claim after the two years have passed, even if they have strong evidence that would allow a court to rule in their favor.
An exception to this law is when the patient is under the age of 18. For minor patients, a claim may be filed for eight years following the trauma, but not later than the patient’s 22nd birthday.
In order to recover compensation in a dental malpractice claim, there are a few different elements that your attorney will work to demonstrate.
In order to provide dental malpractice, you and your attorney will work to gather evidence, speak with experts in the field, and put together a summary that outlines the injuries suffered and compensation requested for damages.
In the event that you suffer an injury from a dentist who is performing work on your mouth, you could have an expensive recovery. There are several different types of compensation that you might receive if you pursue a dental malpractice case. These often include recovering:
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]. Since medical ma