Compensation for Medical Negligence

May 29, 2024

Medical mistakes often result in costly, life-altering complications. Excessive medical bills, attendant care costs, and lost wages are all common outcomes of medical malpractice. When you need to recover compensation for medical negligence, one of your first questions likely concerns how much money you can recover through medical malpractice damages.

You need to sit down with an experienced medical malpractice lawyer if you want an accurate answer about your medical malpractice case value. However, understanding how medical malpractice damages are calculated can give you an idea of how much you might stand to gain by filing a claim.

Types of Medical Malpractice Compensation

Medical malpractice compensation is often discussed in terms of a lump sum amount. For example, if you look over a law firm’s case results page, you’ll see results reported as “$9 million: Child who suffered brain damage.” In this example, $9 million might be the total medical malpractice settlement amount obtained, but that total is the combined value of different types of damages.

There are two primary types of medical malpractice compensation available through the average claim — non-economic damages and economic damages. In some cases, filing a lawsuit might result in a third type of compensation, known as punitive damages.

Economic Damages

Economic damages typically serve as the foundation of your medical malpractice claim. Other forms of damages are factored based on the total amount of economic damages. This category encompasses any type of financial cost or loss that you can demonstrate with evidence. Examples of items commonly claimed under economic damages include:

• Surgery bills
• Medical bills
• Prescription medication costs
• Physical therapist costs
• Medical device costs
• Lost wages and benefits.
• Attendant care or assisted living costs.

Your lawyer can identify the amount of economic damages in your case by using bills, receipts, pay stubs, and any other form of documentation that offers proof of the injury’s financial impact. When medical malpractice results in severe or permanent injury, it’s likely that you’ll also be faced with future or lifelong injury expenses. In cases like this, your lawyer can work with your doctor or another medical professional to identify your likely future costs, such as future surgeries, therapies, and procedures, as well as the long-term costs for attendant care and medical devices.

Similarly, when an injury takes away your earning ability, a lawyer can identify how many more years you would have worked and the lifetime wages, insurance benefits, and retirement benefits you would have earned over those years if the medical malpractice hadn’t taken place. When a loved one dies as a result of medical malpractice, an attorney can help you recover these types of costs, as well as funeral and burial costs, through a wrongful death claim.

Non-Economic Damages

Non-economic damages are the other primary form of medical malpractice compensation. These are typically only available in cases involving severe or permanent injury. When medical malpractice has a life-altering impact on the health and quality of life of the injured individual, this form of compensation provides payment for the non-financial or emotional impact of the medical negligence.

Common examples of non-economic damages a lawyer may be able to help you recover include:

• Pain and suffering
• Emotional anguish
• Scarring and disfigurement
• Embarrassment and humiliation
• Loss of companionship
• Loss of consortium
• Diminished quality of life.

The type of non-economic damages you may qualify for depends on the nature of your medical malpractice injuries and how they have impacted you and your family. If your case is eligible for non-economic damages, these may be calculated in a few different ways.

The two primary options are the daily rate method and the multiplier method. The daily rate method, also known as the per diem method, consists of assigning a daily dollar amount for non-economic damages and multiplying that daily rate by the number of days you will live with the emotional impact. The multiplier method involves identifying a multiplier. This number usually falls between 1.5 and 5, depending on the severity of the injuries. Then, your economic damages amount is multiplied by the given multiplier, resulting in your total non-economic damages amount. Medical malpractice attorneys usually prefer the multiplier method because it typically allows clients to recover more compensation.

Around half of all U.S. states place caps, or limits, on the amount of non-economic damages that can be recovered in medical malpractice claims. Neither Pennsylvania nor New Jersey has such a cap in place, meaning there is no legal limit for how much money injured patients can recover for non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases.

Punitive Damages

The final form of medical malpractice compensation is called punitive damages. Unlike the other types of compensation, punitive damages can only be recovered by court order as part of your verdict when you file a lawsuit and take your claim to court. Punitive damages are reserved for a small percentage of cases involving excessive or intentional negligence.

In most Pennsylvania cases, punitive damages are capped and cannot exceed 200% of compensatory damages, which is the total combined amount of economic and non-economic damages. Additionally, 25% of the punitive damages amount recovered cannot be kept and must instead be paid to the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error Fund (MCARE). This fund helps cover patient claims that aren’t fully covered under the provider’s medical malpractice insurance.

New Jersey also caps punitive damages amounts in medical malpractice cases. The amount recovered is capped at whichever is greater — either $350,000 or five times the amount recovered in compensatory damages.

Factors That Impact Medical Malpractice Compensation

Medical malpractice compensation is unique in every case. Some of the most central factors that impact your case include:

• Severity of injuries
• Long-term impact
• Whether earning ability is lost
• Whether attendant care is necessary
• Age and health of the injured individual
• How non-economic damages are calculated
• Whether a court awards punitive damages.

Most of the elements that impact medical malpractice compensation, such as injury severity and long-term impact, are beyond your control. However, you can control one of the most important factors in your case, and that is the skill and experience level of your lawyer. A medical malpractice claim can provide you with life-altering injury compensation. It’s essential to do your research and choose a lawyer who has a proven track record of successfully obtaining results in the field of medical malpractice.

Schedule a Free Consultation With a Medical Malpractice Lawyer

Wapner Newman is a leader in medical malpractice representation across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Our skilled legal team has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for our clients, with many of our cases centering around medical malpractice claims. When you need a medical malpractice attorney you can trust, our past clients can attest that Wapner Newman is the right firm for the job.