Medical malpractice claims are civil tort claims for personal injury for which the remedy is typically monetary damages. Medical malpractice claims are not criminal claims, which makes sense because if medical malpractice was criminal in nature, many careful and competent health care providers would not be willing to risk incarceration or other criminal punishment and therefore would stop practicing medicine, and it would become even more difficult to retain competent medical staff if they risked a criminal conviction.
Medical malpractice involves the alleged failure of a health care provider to provide care and treatment consistent with the standard of care of health care providers in the same or similar medical specialties. If health care professionals breach the established standard of care in their community, they may be held liable for monetary damages for the harms that naturally flow from their failures to provide appropriate care and treatment. They may also be subject to professional discipline by state boards of medicine, including restrictions placed on their medical license, suspension of their medical license, or revocation of their license to practice medicine. They may also be saddled with fines or ordered to pursue remedial medical education in the areas in which they have been found to be deficient.
This is not to say that medical providers are exempt from criminal prosecution where they may also be found to have committed medical malpractice. An example is a physician who operates a “pill mill” and inappropriately prescribes opioids or other narcotics to patients in dosages or amounts that they should know are dangerous. For example, a federal jury recently convicted a Louisiana physician for conspiring to illegally distribute over 1.8 million doses of Schedule II controlled substances, including oxycodone and morphine, and for defrauding health care benefit programs of more than $5.4 million. Source
Medical providers may also be criminally prosecuted for acts that they intended to harm patients. For example, a Texas anesthesiologist was arrested in Plano, Texas on criminal charges related to allegedly injecting nerve blocking and bronchodilation drugs into patient IV bags at a local surgical center, resulting in at least one death and multiple cardiac emergencies. Source
If the actions or omissions of a health care provider may have harmed you or a family member, you may desire to seek retribution and hope that the health care provider be arrested and charged with a crime. However, you may be cutting off your nose to spite your face because most medical malpractice insurance policies expressly exclude coverage for intentional or criminal acts. If so, the victim of such egregious wrongdoing may find that they cannot collect on any judgment that may be rendered against the medical provider. This is all the more reason that you should promptly seek the legal advice of a local medical malpractice lawyer if a health care provider has caused harm to you or a family member.
If you or a family member may have been harmed as a result of medical malpractice in the United States, click on the “Contact Us Now” tab to the right, visit our website, or call us toll-free in the United States at 800-295-3959 to find medical malpractice attorneys in your state who may investigate your medical malpractice claim for you and represent you or your family member in a medical malpractice case, if appropriate.
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