Emergency Room Waiting Times, Continued
March 30, 2010I’ve written a blog before about excessive emergency room wait times. And now I’m fuming about this topic. As a medical malpractice lawyer, I’m seeing more and more patients and their families due to the disastrous consequences of waiting unreasonable lengths of time to be seen by an emergency room doctor. Sometimes the ‘consequences’ include death.
Let me give you some food for thought. You drive yourself to the emergency department suffering nausea, severe headaches, weakness, and an uncomfortable feeling in your chest. Over the course of the ten hour emergency room wait, you decide to go home. The emergency room staff won’t tell you how much longer your wait will be. You just need to lie down and rest. You go home...you die of heart failure.
How can this happen? Our ‘free’ health care system means nothing if people are not treated within a reasonable time. People in desperate need of expedient treatment are leaving our hospital emergency rooms because they simply can’t physically stand waiting longer. Clearly, far more money has to be applied to the emergency care system and far less to administration. If the province doesn’t set its attention to this issue, more people will leave without treatment and potentially die.
I don’t have the answers to solve the funding problems. As a medical malpractice lawyer I only can try to resolve the legal issues that arise from unreasonable wait times.
If you or a family member has suffered as a result of a hospital’s failure to treat in a timely manner, you may have legal recourse. Cases arising from a hospital’s failure to treat in a reasonable time are complex. You should seek a lawyer with experience in these types of cases.
It is often difficult to know where to turn to find experienced legal counsel. Though I sincerely wish no one would ever need a lawyer to help with cases involving emergency room wait times, it’s my experience that there is an increase in the number of complaints involving emergency room wait times. If you have suffered as a result of unreasonable emergency room wait times and you don’t know where to turn, Injury Alliance can help you locate a lawyer in your area with the expertise you need with this type of medical malpractice action.
**Note: Blog postings are subject to a screening process, they may not appear right away.**
