A medical malpractice protective insurance policy is meant to cover someone from any injuries or suffering brought on by medical practitioners.
Medical Malpractice
Medical malpractice is an act of omission usually non intentional by a health care provider personnel, which does not meet with accepted standards of medical practice, and has therefore brought injuries or other damages to the patient.
In the United States, there is a specific medical malpractice protective insurance imposed by a specific designed law to insure that such practices of negligence are brought to justice and never repeated again.
Medical malpractice is usually associated with physicians but it also includes the acts of omission by other medical personal as well such as nurses, dentists and therapists; also hospitals, clinics or other medical corporations can fall into the medical malpractice protective insurance policy.
The three main things a plaintiff must prove in order to sue for medical malpractice:
1. That the health provider did not carry out his/her duty of care towards the patient and due to which the patient suffered or suffers injury and/or pain.
2. That the health provider failed to take action in the appropriate time frame after diagnosis of diseases was made which caused the patient to suffer pain and/or injury.
3. That it is fair and reasonable to hold the accused party responsible for the caused health injury.
In the US all doctors must have a medical malpractice protective insurance in order to practice so, usually such malpractice claim starts as an insurance claim rather then law suit; most times the cases are settled out of court by a mutual agreement between the doctor and the patient's lawyers.
In such settlement fails to take place plaintiff will file a law suit which will start an investigation for the trial. At trial the plaintiff has to prove all the charges by acceptable court rules and regulations such as expert witness of the case who has to be duly qualified in order to testify for a medical case.
The law also requires that lay jurors or judges to accept expert evidence as they are not trained in medicine field and cannot pass a judgment without expert qualified advice.
Medical malpractice law suits are taxing, stressing and time consuming; often having to leave your career on hold to be able to give full attention to the requirements of such trials. Taking in consideration that life and death is at stake a full and in depth investigation is always done before the beginning of a medical malpractice trial making sure that both parties involved are given the opportunities to prove their innocence.