When most people think of medical malpractice, they picture dramatic operating room disasters. But the most common examples of malpractice are quieter, more routine failures that happen every day in hospitals and clinics across Illinois. Here are the seven categories I see most often in my practice.
Failure to diagnose cancer is probably the most heartbreaking category. A patient presents with symptoms. The doctor orders basic tests but does not follow up on abnormal results. Or the radiologist misreads the imaging and calls a tumor benign when it is malignant. Or the primary care doctor dismisses the patient's concerns for months while the cancer advances from stage one to stage three. The delay does not cause the cancer, but it causes the loss of treatment options and the reduction in survival odds. That loss is compensable under Illinois law through the loss-of-chance doctrine recognized in Holton v. Memorial Hospital.
Surgical errors beyond the dramatic wrong-site cases include nerve damage during routine procedures, perforated organs during laparoscopic surgery, inadequate hemostasis leading to post-operative bleeding, and failure to recognize and repair damage to adjacent structures. These errors often do not become apparent until the patient is in the recovery room or back home, which makes timely documentation critical.
Medication errors in hospital settings happen more frequently than most patients realize. Wrong medication administered, wrong dosage, wrong route of administration, medication given to the wrong patient, dangerous drug interactions that the prescribing physician should have caught. Electronic health records are supposed to flag interactions, but the alerts are often overridden by busy physicians. When a medication error causes harm, the prescribing physician, the pharmacy, and the administering nurse can all be liable.
Failure to monitor patients after procedures is a growing category as hospitals push to discharge patients faster. A patient undergoes a procedure that requires close monitoring of vital signs, neurological status, or wound drainage. The nursing staff is stretched thin and the monitoring does not happen at the required intervals. By the time someone checks on the patient, a complication that could have been caught and treated early has progressed to a life-threatening emergency.
Birth injuries during labor and delivery are among the highest-stakes malpractice cases because the injuries are often permanent and the victim, the baby, has an entire lifetime of medical needs ahead. Failure to monitor fetal heart tones, failure to recognize fetal distress and order a timely C-section, improper use of forceps or vacuum extractors, and excessive force during delivery can all result in brachial plexus injuries, cerebral palsy, or hypoxic brain injury.
Anesthesia errors are less common than the other categories but tend to be catastrophic when they happen. The patterns I see: failure to take an adequate pre-operative history (missed drug interactions, missed sleep apnea risk factors, missed allergy history), failure to monitor vital signs and respiratory status during sedation, dosing errors that cause hypoxic brain injury or cardiac arrest, and intubation injuries from improper technique. Anesthesia errors during outpatient procedures - dental sedation, plastic surgery, colonoscopies - are a growing category as more procedures move out of hospital settings into ambulatory facilities with less rigorous monitoring.
Hospital-acquired infections - MRSA, C. diff, surgical site infections, central-line-associated bloodstream infections, ventilator-associated pneumonia - kill tens of thousands of Americans every year and harm many more. Not every hospital infection is malpractice; some are unavoidable. But when the infection traces back to a clear failure of sterile technique, contaminated equipment that should have been replaced, hand-hygiene failures documented in the hospital's own records, or a known infection-prone unit that was not closed for decontamination, the case is viable. CDC reports, hospital-specific infection rate data, and prior citations from state surveys are powerful evidence in these cases.
If any of these scenarios sounds familiar, call me at 312-500-4500. I will review the records for free and tell you whether you have a case.
The most common examples include misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis (especially of cancer, heart attacks, and strokes), surgical errors (wrong-site surgery, nerve damage, retained instruments), medication errors (wrong drug, wrong dose, dangerous interactions), birth injuries (cerebral palsy, Erb's palsy, oxygen deprivation), anesthesia errors, failure to order appropriate tests, and hospital-acquired infections from poor sanitation.
No. Medicine involves risk, and not every bad outcome is malpractice. Malpractice occurs when a healthcare provider deviates from the accepted standard of care - meaning they did something a reasonably competent doctor in the same specialty would not have done, or failed to do something they should have done - and that deviation caused harm. A bad outcome from a properly performed procedure is not malpractice.
Yes, in many cases. If the doctor is an employee of the hospital, the hospital is liable under the doctrine of respondeat superior. Even if the doctor is an independent contractor, the hospital can be liable under 'apparent agency' if you reasonably believed the doctor was a hospital employee. Hospitals can also be directly liable for negligent credentialing, understaffing, or systemic failures.
A mistake qualifies as malpractice if it represents a deviation from the standard of care that a competent physician in the same specialty would have followed, and if that deviation caused you measurable harm. This determination requires review by a medical expert in the same specialty. Under Illinois law, you need a certificate of merit from such an expert before filing suit.
Request your complete medical records. Document how the error has affected your health and daily life. Do not discuss the situation with the hospital's risk management team or sign anything. Contact a medical malpractice attorney at 312-500-4500 for a free review of your case - we'll have qualified medical experts evaluate whether malpractice occurred.
Under 735 ILCS 5/13-212, an Illinois medical malpractice lawsuit must generally be filed within two years from the date the injured person knew or reasonably should have known about both the injury and that it was caused by the alleged malpractice. The four-year statute of repose imposes an absolute outer limit - the lawsuit must be filed within four years of the negligent act itself, even if the malpractice was not discovered until later. For minors, the statute is extended to eight years from the date of malpractice, but cannot extend beyond the child's 22nd birthday. For wrongful death medical malpractice, the two-year clock under the Illinois Wrongful Death Act (740 ILCS 180/2) runs from the date of death, with the same four-year outer limit. The deadlines are strict, and the date the clock started running is one of the most heavily litigated issues in malpractice cases - so call early.
Under the Illinois Supreme Court's decision in Holton v. Memorial Hospital (1997), an Illinois plaintiff in a medical malpractice case can recover even when the malpractice did not directly cause the underlying disease but reduced the patient's chance of a better outcome. The classic example is a delayed cancer diagnosis: the doctor's failure to diagnose did not cause the cancer, but the delay caused the cancer to progress from stage one to stage three, reducing the patient's chance of survival. The plaintiff can recover for that loss of chance even though the malpractice did not cause the cancer itself. Loss-of-chance cases are common in failure-to-diagnose malpractice and require careful expert testimony about how earlier diagnosis would have changed the treatment options and survival statistics.
Economic damages include past and future medical bills, lost wages, future lost earning capacity, life care plan expenses for catastrophic injuries (in-home nursing, durable medical equipment, accessibility modifications), and out-of-pocket costs related to the injury. Non-economic damages include pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of normal life, disfigurement, and disability. Illinois currently has no statutory cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases following the Illinois Supreme Court's decision in Lebron v. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital (2010), which struck down the prior $500,000 / $1,000,000 caps as unconstitutional. In wrongful death medical malpractice cases, surviving family members can pursue compensation for lost financial support, loss of companionship and society, and grief. The Survival Act (755 ILCS 5/27-6) also allows recovery for the conscious pain and suffering the decedent experienced before death.
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Scott DeSalvo founded DeSalvo Law to help injured people throughout Chicago and surrounding suburbs. Licensed to practice law in Illinois since 1998, IARDC #6244452, Scott has represented over 3,000 clients in personal injury, workers compensation, and accident cases.
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