Going to the hospital is supposed to help you get better, not make things worse. Patients of Geisinger Medical Center who suffered unexpected injuries and complications may wonder if medical malpractice may have caused the harm they suffered.
There’s one way to get answers and figure out how to move forward. You need to speak with a hospital negligence lawyer.
The Pennsylvania medical malpractice attorneys at Console & Associates, P.C. have a long history of investigating hospital negligence claims and helping victims of medical errors secure compensation. We have helped thousands of clients get the results they deserve.
Let us review your hospital malpractice case against Geisinger Medical Center at no cost. Just call 866-778-5500 or complete our online contact form for a confidential, no-obligation consultation.
Whether you are a longtime patient of Geisinger medical facilities or the incident that has you suspecting malpractice occurred during your first visit to one of the health system’s hospitals, you may have questions about Geisinger and its hospitals’ services and safety ratings.
Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Montour County, PA, is a general medical and surgical hospital and a teaching hospital. The 475-bed facility bills itself as “the largest tertiary/quaternary care teaching hospital in the region,” which means that it offers both specialized care and treatment in a hospital setting and advanced-level specialized medical care. Geisinger Medical Center is home to a Level 1 Regional Resource Trauma Center and the 89-bed Janet Weis Children’s Hospital.
Geisinger Medical Center was regionally ranked 19th in Pennsylvania on U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals in Pennsylvania list. U.S. News rated the hospital as high performing in one adult specialty, pulmonology and lung surgery, as well as in the following seven procedures and conditions:
Geisinger Medical Center in Danville received no “below average” ratings from U.S. News & World Report, which calculated a Patient Experience score of four out of five stars for the facility.
Rankings of the best hospitals and of medical facilities’ performance across major specialties, procedures, and conditions can offer insight into the quality of the medical services they provide. However, another metric to look at in understanding how safe a medical facility is for the patients who are treated there is the Hospital Safety Grade conferred by independent nonprofit patient health and safety organization The Leapfrog Group.
The Leapfrog Group awarded Geisinger Medical Center a letter grade of “B” in the fall of 2022. This grade represents a dip from the facility’s “A” grades awarded in each of the previous four grading periods.
According to The Leapfrog Group, Geisinger Medical Center’s performance in the following categories constituted merely average or below average performance during this grading period.
Know your options.
Geisinger Medical Center in Danville isn’t the only hospital in the Geisinger health system. The Geisinger health system encompasses ten hospital campuses, including:
Even when a hospital has a good reputation and strong safety and performance grades, these reassuring ratings don’t promise either a favorable medical outcome or immunity from medical errors. Negligence and medical errors can still happen at hospitals that generally have good reputations.
Patients and family members who believe that medical malpractice may have occurred shouldn’t drop the matter just because the hospital is well-regarded by others. The only way to know for sure whether hospital negligence played a part in the harm you suffered—and to recover the money you deserve for these harms—is to speak directly with a law firm that handles medical malpractice claims in Pennsylvania.
You are not alone.
Medical malpractice law is complex. While your hospital negligence lawyer will handle every aspect of your hospital malpractice lawsuit against Geisinger Medical Center for you, it’s still helpful to have a basic understanding of what malpractice is and what to expect from the legal process.
Malpractice in health care means patient care that deviates from the standard of care. Essentially, the standard of care refers to the practices used by the larger medical community in the diagnosis and treatment of patients and their medical conditions.
The standard of care is among the most important medical malpractice elements. Even treatment that has an unfavorable outcome doesn’t constitute malpractice if the healthcare providers and facilities involved adhered to the standard of care throughout your diagnosis and treatment.
For a successful hospital negligence claim, the main criteria that must be met are:
Generally, patients in hospital malpractice lawsuits are seeking compensation for the damages, or the harms and losses (of all types), that they sustained. Your damages in a hospital malpractice lawsuit are likely to include some of the following:
In cases involving a wrongful death due to hospital malpractice, a surviving family member who sues the hospital may seek compensation for both the economic losses they suffered because of their family member’s death and the non-economic losses, including the loss of support, love, advice, and companionship.
Evaluating a potential medical malpractice claim against a hospital like Geisinger requires a thorough investigation and the opinions of medical experts. When you reach out to our attorneys, we will gather the information we need from you to begin investigating the potential malpractice. Determining if you have the grounds for a successful case requires us to thoroughly review your medical records and present them to expert witnesses who can provide their opinions as medical doctors as to whether your providers followed or deviated from the standard of care.
Although this process may sound complex, we want to make moving forward with a claim hassle-free for you. We evaluate cases like yours free of charge, and we will even cover the upfront costs of having expert witnesses review your medical records. If you don’t have a claim, you haven’t lost anything—and if you have a case, we can represent you throughout this legal matter on a no-win, no-fee basis.
As reported by local and regional news media, some examples of medical malpractice cases in which Geisinger has been named as a defendant include the following.
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Patients’ legal rights have limits. Generally, medical malpractice claims against hospitals in Pennsylvania are subject to a two-year statute of limitations. If the patient doesn’t commence litigation—in other words, file a lawsuit—by the time this deadline passes, they can no longer pursue compensation under Pennsylvania law.
Depending on the situation, this two-year period may begin right away or not for months or even years. In cases in which the injured patient is an adult, the statute of limitations begins when the medical error was or should have been discovered. This distinction is important because only some medical errors are immediately apparent to the patient.
Whether the statute of limitations in your case begins on the day a surgery goes wrong or not until months later, after tests reveal the real reason for your complications, you need to take action right away. The medical malpractice claims process is complicated, and there’s a lot to be done before an attorney files a lawsuit on your behalf. The sooner you reach out to a law firm for help with your case, the better prepared your attorney will be to conduct a full investigation and gather the evidence needed to prove your case before the statute of limitations passes.
The Journal of the American Medical Association reported in 2000 that 225,000 patients die from medical errors each year. In 2016, Johns Hopkins Medicine put that figure even higher, at 250,000 deaths per year, and reported that medical errors had become the third leading cause of death in the U.S.
Plaintiffs filed 1,476 medical malpractice lawsuits in Pennsylvania in 2020, The Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania reported. From 1990 to 2020, 36,843 reports of medical malpractice were filed in PA, resulting in $10,232,740,000 in compensation, according to the National Practitioner Data Bank’s Medical Malpractice Payout Report.
When you hire a lawyer for hospital malpractice, you no longer have to worry about navigating the legal process. We will handle every aspect of the claims process for you, from the initial investigation and pre-litigation phases through resolving your claim through an out-of-court settlement or by taking your case to trial. We will keep you updated throughout your claim and represent you in all legal proceedings involved in your case.
Pursuing a medical malpractice claim with Console & Associates, P.C. on your side won’t cost you anything upfront. We offer free consultations to every potential client and handle cases on a no-win, no-fee basis. Under our No Fee Promise, you won’t ever pay any hourly fees, and we will advance the costs of pursuing your claim. You’ll only ever pay a fraction of the compensation we secure for you. If we don’t succeed in getting you compensation, you pay nothing.
Hospital malpractice cases are challenging. You’re going to want an experienced Pennsylvania medical malpractice attorney on your side.
The law firm of Console & Associates, P.C. has helped thousands of people harmed by someone else’s negligence recover the full amount of compensation they deserve. We have a decades-long record of success fighting for the rights of the injured.
If you’re ready to move forward with your hospital malpractice case, our attorneys are standing by to help. Call 866-778-5500 or complete our contact form today for your free consultation.
