Hospital Malpractice Lawsuit Settlements

Hospitals can be liable for medical malpractice just like doctors. Hospital malpractice claims are somewhat different than malpractice cases against individual doctors. Our lawyers explain the basics of when a hospital can be held liable in medical malpractice cases. We will also look at the average settlement value of hospital malpractice cases.

Hospitals Owe Duty of Care to Patients

All hospitals have a duty to adopt and follow certain policies and procedures to safeguard the health and safety of patients. This includes a wide range of obligations. Hospitals are responsible for ensuring that doctors and other professionals practicing at the hospital are licensed and qualified. Hospitals also have a duty to maintain proper policies and administrative procedures to protect patient safety and minimize medical mistakes.

Unfortunately, medical mistakes and errors occur at hospitals on a regular basis. In fact, a number of studies have estimated that 1% of hospital patients are impacted by some type of medical malpractice. This means that 1 out of every 100 patients who gets admitted to a hospital will receive negligent medical care. This amounts to literally hundreds of thousands of hospital malpractice victims every year.

When is a Hospital Liable for Malpractice

Hospitals can be held liable in a medical malpractice lawsuit in one of two possible scenarios: (1) the hospital may be directly liable for negligently failing to provide the level of patient care required from hospitals, and (2) the hospital can be vicariously (indirectly) liable for the negligent actions of its employees (including doctors, nurses, etc.) within the scope of their employment.

The first category of direct hospital liability in malpractice cases, is sometimes referred to as corporate liability or institutional liability. The second type of hospital malpractice liability is known as “respondeat superior” or, more simply, vicarious liability.

Hospital Liability for Employee Malpractice

 Generally, employers are legally responsible for the actions of their employees while on the job. This is due to a legal rule called “respondeat superior,” which is basically a very fancy way of saying the company is responsible for acts done by its employees on its behalf.

This principle applies to hospital employees the same way that it applies to employees of other companies. The only difference is that hospital employees often include doctors and nurses who can be liable for medical malpractice. If a hospital employee provides negligent medical care that injures a patient, the hospital is typically liable for the patient’s injuries.

Hospital employees usually include nurses, medical technicians, and support staff. If any of these employees cause an injury while performing their job-related duties negligently, the patient can often sue the hospital for damages.

For instance, if a hospital-employed registered nurse (R.N.) negligently administers the wrong medication through a patient’s IV, resulting in injury, the hospital would likely be liable for the nurse’s negligence.

However, if a doctor makes a similar mistake by negligently administering the wrong drug, the hospital is probably not liable. This is because doctors are often considered “independent contractors,” not hospital employees. This is not ALWAYS the case, however, as some doctors are actually considered employees of the hospital. But more often than not, doctors will be independently liable for malpractice.

One area that creates confusion is whether hospitals can be liable if their employees are working under the direct control and supervision of an independent doctor. If hospitals employees acted under the direction of the doctor, the hospital might not be liable. The answer to this depends on the specific facts of the case and how much control the doctor had over the employees.

Determining Doctor Employment Status in Hospital Malpractice Lawsuits

In hospital malpractice lawsuits, a key factor is whether a doctor is classified as a hospital employee or an independent contractor. This distinction is crucial because hospitals can be held vicariously liable for the malpractice of their employees, but not typically for independent contractors.  This often looms large in birth injury lawsuits because the settlements and jury payouts if often in the tens of millions of dollars.  Most doctors do not have that much medical malpractice insurance.  So getting the hospital on the hook is key to maximizing the settlement the victims receive.

Defining the Doctor-Hospital Relationship

To ascertain a doctor’s employment status, the first step is to examine the formal agreement between the doctor and the hospital. If the doctor is listed as an employee in hospital records, such as for payroll and tax purposes, the hospital is generally liable for their actions under the doctrine of respondeat superior.

However, even if a doctor is not formally designated as an employee, certain circumstances can still establish an employment relationship for liability purposes. This may occur if the hospital exerts significant control over the doctor’s work conditions, such as dictating work hours, setting fees, or closely supervising the doctor’s medical practice.

The Importance of Control in Employment Determination

So the fact that the hospital does not call the doctor employee is not game over in this analysis.  The degree of control a hospital exercises over a doctor can be a key factor in determining whether the doctor is an employee.

If the hospital provides the tools and space for the doctor’s practice, mandates certain procedures or protocols, or significantly directs the doctor’s clinical decisions, this can imply an employer-employee relationship. This control criterion can make the hospital liable for the doctor’s malpractice, even if they are labeled as an independent contractor.

Implications for Hospital Malpractice Lawsuits

Again, it is sometimes vital to the case to push the doctor’s employment status to employee.  If a doctor is deemed an employee, the hospital’s financial and insurance resources can become available to satisfy claims for damages.

Conversely, if the doctor is an independent contractor, patients may need to seek compensation directly from the doctor’s malpractice insurance. In that case, if you do not have a claim against the nurses – who are almost always employees – it is hard to get the hospital on the hook for compensation.

Navigating Complex Legal Relationships

Determining a doctor’s employment status can be complex and requires a thorough examination of the relationship between the doctor and the hospital. Legal professionals specializing in medical malpractice can provide crucial assistance in navigating these issues, ensuring that all responsible parties are held accountable for any negligence or malpractice.

Direct Hospital Malpractice

Hospitals can also be directly liable in medical malpractice cases if it can be demonstrated that the hospital itself was negligent. This type of liability, known as institutional hospital liability, often involves the hospital’s policies and procedures.

For instance, a hospital may be considered negligent if it fails to implement adequate policies to prevent post-surgical infections or lacks proper guidelines for the safe administration of medications, thereby increasing the risk of dangerous drug interactions.

Additionally, even if a hospital has appropriate policies in place, it can still be held liable if it fails to enforce these policies or ensure that its staff adheres to them.

This is particularly important as nurses, who are typically employed by the hospital, play a crucial role in patient care and adherence to these protocols.

Hospitals may also be found negligent for not providing proper training to their employees, including nurses, on these policies and procedures, potentially leading to harmful mistakes and patient injuries.

Hospitals Are More Likely to Settle Than Doctors

Is it usually easier to achieve success in a medical malpractice case against a hospital than against an individual doctor. There are 2 primary reasons why malpractice claims against hospitals are easier: (1) settlement incentive; and (2) jury perception.

Individual doctors are often very reluctant to settle medical malpractice claims for 2 reasons. First, most doctors simply don’t like to admit to making mistakes and tend to dig in their heels when named in a malpractice suit.

Second, doctors do not want to settle malpractice claims because it will cause their insurance rates to go up. By contrast, it usually doesn’t cost doctors anything to defend a malpractice case (the insurance carrier pays for the defense) and if they end up winning their rates won’t increase and it looks better for their reputation.

Hospitals are much more inclined to settle legitimate medical malpractice claims than individual doctors.  Hospitals are self-insured which means they pay for malpractice claims themselves. It costs the hospital a lot of money to defend a malpractice case. The hospital doesn’t want to spend thousands defending a case if they think they are going to lose and end up paying millions in damages.

Losing at trial is particularly a concern for hospitals because they tend to fare much worse with juries. Jurors are often inclined to view individual doctors as infallible and give them the benefit of the doubt. It is much easier, however, for jurors to lay blame on a large institution such as a hospital.

Another reason why hospitals often make better defendants is that most large hospitals are very concerned with their public image and reputation. Hospitals are also very worried about the reputational hit they will take in the event of a large verdict.

So if a major malpractice verdict against a hospital gets reported in the news it can be very damaging to the hospital’s brand and reputation. This often motivates hospitals to settle claims quickly before they get to trial.

Hospital Malpractice Verdicts and Settlements

• $9,500,000 Settlement (Hawaii 2024): — A family settled for $9.5 million after a 31-year-old woman died following a gastric bypass surgery at Tripler Army Medical Center. The surgery, intended for postpartum weight loss, was marred by multiple errors, including the incorrect attachment of the small intestine, leading to complications such as a hernia and lung damage. The woman suffered brain hemorrhages from clot-busting medication, resulting in “locked-in” syndrome, sepsis, and ultimately her death.
• $32.5 Million Settlement (Pennsylvania 2024):  A lawsuit alleged that a child, referred to as D.O., suffered hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, a type of brain injury caused by oxygen deprivation, during delivery at Reading Hospital. The plaintiffs claimed the hospital failed to identify and respond to an infection in the mother before birth and did not provide therapeutic hypothermia, a treatment to reduce brain injury, after D.O.’s birth. The defense argued that the mother’s infection was not evident and that normal umbilical cord blood gases indicated no hypoxia-ischemia at birth. The case, initially declined by another attorney, was taken up by a birth injury lawyer that developed a theory focusing on the hospital’s failure to administer therapeutic hypothermia, which the plaintiffs argued could have mitigated the injury. Despite the hospital’s assertion that appropriate care was provided, the case proceeded to trial, where serious settlement discussions led to a $32.5 million settlement agreement shortly after opening statements.
• $3,500,000 Settlement (Pennsylvania 2024): A 65-year-old woman went to hospital emergency room with a fever. Blood work reportedly revealed multiple abnormalities, including a critical lactate level of 3.2, a sign of organ dysfunction that should have resulted in prompt follow-up investigation. Instead, a repeat measurement reportedly was never conducted and the patient was told to go to another hospital. The patient developed sepsis and died. The hospital negligence claim asserted that the hospital failed to ensure that staff followed established policies and guidelines for sepsis screening .
• $3,250,000 Settlement (Illinois 2024): A 71-year-old man went to the defendant hospital with chest pain and received treatment from several named defendant physicians, including defendant emergency room physician who was an agent and/or employee of the hospital. The patient died the next day and the lawsuit claimed that the employee doctor was negligent for failing to diagnose and repair an aortic dissection, and failing to perform diagnostic tests.
• $925,000 Settlement (Pennsylvania 2023): The decedent went to the hospital and had a VP shunting procedure done. After the procedure he showed signed of an internal bowel injury suffered during the operation indicating that the shunt was improperly placed in the small bowel. He developed sepsis and died 5 days later. His estate hired a hospital malpractice lawyer who brought a wrongful death and survival action, with assertions that included incorrectly placing the shunt, failing to ensure proper placement of the shunt before closing the procedure, failing to appreciate post-operative signs of enterotomy of the small intestine, failing to order post-operative diagnostic testing, and failing to perform proper tests for infection and bowel perforation.
• $121,668,000 Verdict (New York 2023): A man went to the defendant hospital and a head and neck CT scan were ordered. The scans were interpreted by a second-year neuroradiology resident (a hospital employee) and there was no supervising neuroradiologist available to review the scans. Unfortunately the resident missed signs on the CT scan that the patient had suffered a stroke and he was not properly treated. The mistake left him incapacitated for the rest of his life.
• $10,600,000 Verdict (Georgia 2023): In this case a nurse, a hospital employee, negligently placed a feeding tube down the patient’s trachea and into her lung, puncturing the lining of the lung. The patient eventually died as a result of the misplaced tube and lung puncture. The family brought a wrongful death action against the hospital based on vicarious liability for the nurse.
• $2,000,000 Settlement (Pennsylvania 2023): The patient was under the care of the defendant, hospital, and exhibited signs and symptoms of a severe mental health condition requiring urgent behavioral evaluation. However, the defendant failed to ensure his immediate admission to a hospital or other appropriate facility for psychiatric evaluation and treatment, which constituted a deviation from the standard of care. Tragically, the patient took his own life two weeks later.
• $1,250,000 Verdict (Minnesota 2022): A 51-year-old patient was reportedly taken to the defendant, Methodist Hospital, where he was given fluids and medication to address nausea and vomiting. An IV was placed in his right foot, but hospital staff ignored his complaints of pain and signs that the IV was incorrectly placed. As a result, he developed a gangrene infection in the foot, which ultimately required amputation.

Contact Us About Hospital Malpractice Lawsuits

 Our national medical malpractice lawyers handle hospital negligence cases across the country. Call us today for a free consultation at 800-553-8082 or contact us online