Legal Question in Personal Injury in Wisconsin
HOSPITAL INJURY-Negligence to patient
Instead of sending my mother (56) her to the ICU like they normally did the previous 3 times after surgery, they sent her back to a regular room) She was back in her regular room about 5:00 p.m., my dad checked on her and she was still groggy so he left. My brother went to see my mother at 8:00 and she was still sleeping so he did not wake her and went home. Sometime after that point, the nurses claim she needed to use the rest room and escorted her to the rest room, where they stated they left her to use the restroom on her own because they said she was stable on her feet. Subsequently, she fell off the toilet and onto the floor and they found her 15 minutes later. They helped her back to her bed. No one phoned my father to tell him that she fell and possibly injured her head. They did not call him until 9 a.m. the next morning,meanwhile they took at CT scan of her head, unknown to all of us. When I came in at 12:30 7-30-05, my mother did not respond to me, she was pale and did not answer me, that is when the nurse told me she fell. My mom did not look like her self, nor did she look in the same condition as in prev. surgeries of this type. CT was positive for swelling. How do we investigate this injury, we feel they are covering
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: HOSPITAL INJURY-Negligence to patient
The first thing you should know is that there is a three-year statute of limitations in Wisconsin for medical negligence cases, so any case that may be brought has to be filed within three years of the date of the fall.
The next issue is whether your mother will have any long-term residuals from the fall. If not, a case should probably not be brought because medical negligence cases are usually very expensive and time-consuming, and the patients lose many more cases than they win. If the injuries turn out to be serious enough to possibly pursue a case, I think your next step would be to call a lawyer in your part of the state to determine whether the lawyer might be willing to look into the potential claim for your mother. Because medical negligence cases are usually defended vigorously, most lawyers do not want to become involved with such a case.
If you want to contact me and tell me where your mother lives, I might be able to give you the name of a lawyer in your part of the state who handles medical negligence cases. Again, I think the potential damages will first have to be substantial before a lawyer would want to become involved with the case.
Finally, if your mother does not want to contact a lawyer, you might consider contacting the hospital administrator or the hospital risk manager to let them know that you are unhappy about what happened to your mother. The hospital representatives will usually make an effort to find out what happened and will then report their findings to you. Hospitals rarely admit fault, however.
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