Hospital Acquired Infection Lawyers

Can You Sue a Hospital for an Infection You Caught There?

Yes, when something the hospital did or failed to do caused the infection or let it get worse. On any given day in 2023, about 1 in 38 hospital patients had at least one healthcare-associated infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.^[1]

Whether your infection is a case turns on what the records show about line care, catheter care, wound care, hand hygiene, the isolation of contagious patients, and how quickly the infection was treated.

Like every malpractice claim, it has four parts. The hospital or the doctor was responsible for your care, which lawyers call the duty. The care was below what a careful hospital would have done to prevent or treat the infection, which is the breach. That shortfall, more likely than not, caused the infection or made it worse. And it cost you something that can be measured, such as another operation, weeks more in the hospital, lost pay, or a life.

Sometimes the germ came in with the patient and the hospital did what it should have. When the records point that way, we tell the family so.

What Careful Hospitals Do to Prevent Line, Catheter, and Wound Infections

A hospital infection lawsuit usually involves one of these six infections, and each has its own precautions, warning signs, and paper trail.

Central Line Bloodstream Infections

A central line is a tube placed in a large vein, and germs that travel along it go straight into the bloodstream. The CDC calls these infections preventable.^[2] Careful staff place the line under sterile conditions after cleaning the skin, ask each day whether it is still needed, and take it out when it is not. Redness where the line enters the skin, or a fever days after it went in, are the warning signs, and the insertion note and daily line entries show what was done.

Urinary Catheter Infections

Germs can travel up a urinary catheter into the urinary tract. The CDC tells hospitals to use a catheter only when needed, place it with sterile equipment, keep the drainage system closed, and remove it as soon as the patient no longer needs it, and it names prolonged use as the most important risk factor.^[3] A catheter left in for days with no one asking whether it could come out is what a lawyer looks for, and the nursing notes give the day it went in and the day it came out.

Surgical Wound Infections

A careful surgical team cleans the skin, keeps the instruments and the operating field sterile, and gives a preventive antibiotic before the incision when the operation calls for one. Redness and pain around the incision, cloudy drainage, and fever are the signs, and a deep infection can mean a second operation or the removal of an implant. The anesthesia record shows when the antibiotic was given, and when the operation itself was done carelessly, the claim can also include the surgical error behind the wound.

Ventilator Pneumonia

A patient on a breathing machine can develop a lung infection called ventilator-associated pneumonia. Raising the head of the bed, cleaning the patient's mouth on a schedule, and testing each day whether the patient can breathe without the machine lower the risk, and the intensive care flowsheet records each one. If you sat at the bedside, you may remember whether the bed was kept flat.

C. Diff (Clostridioides Difficile)

C. diff causes diarrhea and inflammation of the colon, and the CDC reports that most cases occur while a patient is taking antibiotics or soon after.^[4] Alcohol gel does not kill it, so staff are expected to wash with soap and water, wear gowns and gloves, and move an infected patient to a private room. A claim can rest on an antibiotic that was never needed, a shared room with an infected patient, or days of diarrhea nobody tested, and the medication record, the stool test dates, and the room assignments show which.

MRSA and Other Staph Infections

MRSA is a staph germ that resists common antibiotics and can cause skin, wound, and bloodstream infections. It passes between patients on hands and surfaces, so hand cleaning and isolating patients known to carry it are the hospital's main defenses. A negative test for MRSA before surgery, followed by a MRSA wound infection, is strong evidence the germ was picked up during the stay, and a staph infection lawyer reads that test beside the culture report.

Any of these infections can turn into sepsis, a medical emergency of its own. If the staff were also slow to treat it, a claim for sepsis that was treated too late can be brought together with the infection claim.

How Culture Dates and Admission Tests Tie an Infection to the Hospital

The hospital's lawyers will say that infection is a known risk of any hospital stay, or that you carried the germ in with you. Timing answers both. Signs and a first positive culture that came days into the stay, or soon after discharge, point to the hospital, and so does a negative admission test for the same germ.

These records show whether proper care would have prevented the infection or caught it sooner.

• The culture and lab reports. The date each sample was taken, the germ that grew, and the antibiotics that work against it.
• The line, catheter, and wound care entries. How each device was placed and looked after, and how long it stayed in.
• The nursing notes and vital signs. When the fever, drainage, or diarrhea appeared, and how long it took anyone to order a test or call a doctor.
• Public reports. Hospitals report several of these infections to the CDC's National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), and published state inspection findings can show whether infection control was cited before.

The records exist no matter what the hospital risk management will tell you. NHSN submissions, Joint Commission audit reports, antimicrobial stewardship review minutes... We can force the hospital to produce them in discovery.

How much of a hospital's internal file a court will order produced depends on the state. Federal law shields the reports a hospital makes to a patient safety organization, and most states protect peer review and quality committee records. Your own chart, the culture reports, the line and catheter records, and the electronic log of who entered what and when are not protected that way, and they are what prove these cases.

An infectious disease physician and a specialist in infection prevention read those records for us, the same first step as in any medical malpractice investigation, and you hear what they found.

The Hospital Answers for Infection Control and the Surgeon for the Operation

Preventing infection is mostly the hospital's job. The hospital employs the nurses who place and care for catheters and the staff who clean the rooms, writes the isolation rules, and decides how many nurses cover a unit. A line dressing left unchanged or a fever nobody reported is nursing malpractice the hospital answers for as the employer.

A surgeon or other doctor answers for his or her own decisions, such as skipping the preventive antibiotic or missing an infected wound. Many doctors are not hospital employees, and state law decides whether the hospital can be sued for a doctor it did not employ.

The hospital and each doctor carry separate insurance, and a claim against the surgeon alone can leave the hospital's insurance company out of the case, so we work out who employed whom before filing.

Which Losses Raise the Value of a MRSA or Staph Infection Settlement?

The losses the infection added to the recovery you expected set the value, and no one can give you an honest figure until the records and the bills have been read. A hospital that offers to write off its bill is offering to cover one item on this list.

• The added medical care. Extra weeks in the hospital, intravenous antibiotics, wound care, and any rehabilitation stay that followed.
• Further surgery. An operation to clean out an infected wound, the removal and replacement of an infected joint implant, or an amputation.
• Lost income. Pay missed while you were treated, and any lasting harm to your ability to work.
• Lasting effects and pain. The care you will need from here on and what you went through. Your state may limit what a malpractice award pays for pain and suffering.

The hospital's insurance company pays the settlement, and once you sign a release the claim is over, so have the chart read first.

When the infection took your family member's life, the family can bring a medical malpractice wrongful death lawsuit for its own losses, and in many states the estate may separately recover for the pain your family member endured. Who may bring the claim is set by state law. Where the estate needs a court-appointed personal representative first, our wrongful death attorneys can help your family through that first court step.

Is the Hospital Infection Lawsuit Deadline Counted From Discharge or Diagnosis?

That varies, and some states count from neither. Some run the clock from the day of the care that caused the infection. Others start on the day you learned, or reasonably should have learned, that the hospital's care was the cause, under a discovery rule that can delay the malpractice clock.

Most malpractice deadlines run one to three years, and many states add a final cutoff measured from the date of the care, however late the cause came to light. An infection can surface after you are home, and tracing it can take months, so plan around the earliest date.

A death brings its own wrongful death deadline, and in some states that clock starts on the date of the care. Notice rules for a county or state hospital differ from state to state, and a few allow only months to send the notice. If the hospital was a VA or other federal facility, the Federal Tort Claims Act requires a written claim to the agency within two years. Bring the admission and discharge dates to the first call, and a hospital infection attorney can work out every date that applies.

Does a Hospital Infection Attorney Charge Anything Before Money Is Recovered?

No. The fee is contingent on recovering money for you, at the percentage named in the agreement you sign. The firm pays for the infectious disease physician, the infection prevention specialist, and the complete chart while the case is open. Their review comes first, because more than half the states require an expert-backed filing before or with a malpractice lawsuit.

Not all personal injury firms take hospital infection cases. The medicine is hard, the defense is well-funded, and the discovery is brutal. Our hospital infection lawyers have the experience and resources to put the file in trial posture to position for maximum compensation.

Lead trial attorney Don Worley brings more than 20 years of personal injury experience.

He is known as "the Lawyer Lawyers Call When Cases Get Complicated."

The first conversation is free whenever you call, and if Spanish is easier for your family, the case can be handled in Spanish from start to finish. Home and hospital visits are available when getting to an office is not possible.

Photograph the Wound Site Daily and Get the Culture Reports in Writing

When a family calls us about a sepsis death or a post-surgical MRSA case, the first thing we do is ask for the discharge summary, the operative report, and any patient-safety incident report the hospital generated internally. These documents are where the case starts.

You can gather the rest yourself, and doing so protects a claim whether or not you ever file one.

• Ask for the culture reports and the full chart. Request the record of the stay in writing, naming the culture reports, the nursing notes, and the line or catheter records, under your right to a copy of your own medical records. After a death, the person with legal authority over the estate makes the request.
• Take a dated photo each day. Photograph the wound, the line site, or the swelling as it changes.
• Hold on to the discharge packet. It shows what the hospital knew when it sent you home and which antibiotic it chose.
• Keep a short timeline. Note when the fever, drainage, or diarrhea began, whom you told, and how long the catheter or line stayed in.
• Leave the release unsigned. Hold any release, bill adjustment, or recorded statement that risk management or the hospital's insurance company asks for until a lawyer you chose has read the chart.