What is Birth Injury Malpractice?
Birth injury malpractice refers to a type of medical negligence that occurs during childbirth or the delivery process. It includes situations where a healthcare provider, such as a doctor, nurse, or midwife, failed to provide appropriate care during labor and delivery, resulting in injury to the newborn or the mother.
Do Birth Injuries Fall Under Obstetrician Malpractice?
Birth injuries can fall under obstetrician malpractice. Obstetricians are medical professionals who specialize in managing pregnancy, labor, and delivery. They have a duty to provide a certain standard of care to their patients and ensure the well-being of both the mother and the baby during childbirth. If an obstetrician fails to meet this standard of care, resulting in a birth injury, it can be considered a form of medical malpractice. If it can be proven that the obstetrician’s negligence directly caused the birth injury, legal action may be pursued to hold the responsible party accountable and seek compensation for the resulting damages.
How Can a Birth Injury Attorney Help Victims?
The joy of having a child can quickly be tainted with tragedy when birth injury or birth trauma occurs. A child can die from a birth injury, or become permanently disabled and require life-long care. The physical, emotional, and financial hardships endured by the parents, siblings, grandparents, and other loved ones of a child injured at birth can be overwhelming and devastating.
What Are the Common Causes of Birth Injury and Birth Trauma?
Obstetrical care providers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have a responsibility to anticipate potential problems that are reasonably foreseeable under the circumstances, and where indicated, to intervene during labor and delivery in a timely manner so as to prevent harm. Negligence, which is the failure to act in accordance with the standard of care, is at the heart of birth injury. Common causes of birth injury and birth trauma include:
- Miscalculation of the size of the fetus
- Pre- or post-mature delivery due to improper dating
- Infections and medical problems in the mother
- Infections and medical problems in the fetus
- Rh incompatibility
- Administration of improper medications during pregnancy and/or delivery
- Failure to monitor the fetus and respond to fetal distress
- Abnormal presentation, including shoulder dystocia
- Failure to perform a timely c-section
- Improper use of delivery instruments
- Failure to give oxygen to newborns when needed (hypoxia birth injury)
WHAT CAN I DO IF I ENCOUNTER BIRTH INJURY MALPRACTICE IN PHILADELPHIA OR NEW JERSEY?
If you suspect that your child may have suffered a birth injury or birth trauma, get medical attention for your child right away. Timely and proper treatment will increase the odds that your child will live with as little damage as possible under the circumstances.
Many children will nevertheless require a lifetime of costly medical care. Many will have to be followed by numerous pediatric specialists and will need ongoing physical and occupational therapy. Sometimes, at-home care is too much for caring parents to provide and placement in a specialized institution is the only realistic option.
Your child should be able to benefit from the most advanced treatment available to increase his or her quality of life.
WHAT ARE BIRTH INJURY MALPRACTICE TREATMENT OPTIONS IN NEW JERSEY OR PHILADELPHIA?
There is often a big difference between the ideal, most advanced treatment and the treatment and services covered by private medical insurance and programs like Medicaid. If your child has suffered a preventable birth injury, the compensation you could receive from a birth injury lawsuit might be the only way to provide the services and care your child needs to maximize his or her recovery.
New Jersey birth injury attorneys Michael L. Weiss,Esq. and Robert E. Paarz, Esq. have presented over 65 birth injury cases and assisted many families in birth injury lawsuit settlements to lessen or eliminate the financial burden caused by birth injuries.
What is the Average Value of a Birth Injury Lawsuit Settlement?
Philadelphia and New Jersey birth injury attorneys handling claims involving birth injuries caused by various types of medical malpractice and/or medical negligence are often unable to protect the value of their clients’ birth injury claims without a thorough, comprehensive review of the relevant medical records. Since each birth injury claim is unique in its cause and because the events giving rise to one’s negligent labor and delivery vary widely, it is difficult to average values across these tragic claims.
Some factors involved in valuing birth injury claims include:
- The extent of the baby’s injury and future impact on their life and their ability to generate an income for themselves and/or their family once they become an adult, an attorney and their medical malpractice team’s prior success rate with similar birth injury claims
- The venue wherein the case must be filed (which will depend on the location where the negligent care took place and/or the location where the client(s) live)
- The projected expense involved in filing a client’s particular birth injury claim
- The number of medical experts who will be required to support the client’s birth injury claim once a lawsuit is filed.
Value analyses are complex and case-specific. At Weiss & Paarz Pennsylvania and New Jersey offices, when victims of medical malpractice contact us to explore a potential birth injury claim, we begin by collecting vital information from the injured child’s parents and extended family (or friends) about what happened.
We then perform a comprehensive and thorough review of our clients’ prenatal care records, labor and delivery admission, NICU and/or post-birth admission, and pediatrician records, and depending on the child’s injury and its’ long-term impact, we review records from specialists, early intervention programs, schooling, and any additional ongoing care. Our experienced birth injury lawyer team leaves no stone unturned.
Once we collect all of the information available from the baby’s family and from their medical records, assuming our team believes there is legal merit such that they would be successful in proving a client’s potential birth injury claim, we begin the process of consulting the top medical experts necessary to file a lawsuit. In both New Jersey and Pennsylvania, medical experts are required to support a medical malpractice claim before it is filed regardless of how strong a law firm believes a client’s birth injury claim is. To get a better understanding of how our career-dedicated birth injury attorneys can help you and your family, contact our medical malpractice team. We do not charge any fees to our clients unless we file their lawsuit and successfully obtain a recovery for them.
LEARN MORE ABOUT PHILADELPHIA AND NEW JERSEY BIRTH INJURY MALPRACTICE
Want to learn more about the different kinds of birth injuries our New Jersey and Pennsylvania offices focus on? Read on below:
*The firm handles cases in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. For cases outside those states, Weiss & Paarz works with local attorneys in the state where the medical care took place, at no additional cost to the client.