Westland Hospital Malpractice Attorneys

Medical malpractice lawsuits rarely revolve around a single, obvious mistake. Instead, they often involve a series of decisions made by multiple people over hours or days, influenced by hospital policies. They show a sequence of small failures that add up to negligence and cause harm to a patient.

Suffering an injury due to hospital error or negligence can take away your trust in the medical system and plunge your future into chaos. It can make you reluctant to seek treatment and endanger your future health. If you’ve been harmed by a Westland hospital mistake, the attorneys at Sommers Schwartz, P.C., can help you hold negligent medical providers responsible for their errors and recover the compensation you deserve.  

The Alarming Reality of Misdiagnoses in Michigan: A Call for Legal Action

One of the most common types of medical malpractice involves misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis. Diagnostic mistakes can subject patients to unnecessary and harmful treatment for conditions they don’t have. They can also delay treatment for a patient’s actual illness or condition, causing additional harm and reducing their chances of a full recovery.

A 2025 analysis published in BMJ Quality and Safety estimates that 795,000 Americans suffer permanent disability or death due to misdiagnoses each year. Diagnostic errors can have life-changing consequences, especially when hospital teams fail to identify time-sensitive conditions such as:

• Stroke.
• Sepsis.
• Internal bleeding.
• Pulmonary embolism.
• Cardiac events.

The Effective Health Care (EHC) Program, a watchdog organization created under the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, published a 2022 review of diagnostic errors in U.S. emergency rooms between 2001 and 2021. The EHC estimates that during 130 million annual emergency department (ED) visits, 7.4 million (5.7%) patients are misdiagnosed, and 2.6 million (2.0%) suffer an adverse event as a result. For about 370,000 (0.3%), a diagnostic error leads to serious harm.

Many misdiagnosis cases involve a chain of events rather than one single mistake. For example, a patient may:

• Have evolving symptoms that aren’t necessarily linked to one specific diagnosis.
• Receive an incomplete medical assessment by a doctor or specialist. 
• Experience escalation of pain and other symptoms.
• Deteriorate before providers make a correct diagnosis. 

Hospital medicine involves frequent handoffs across shifts, each of which increases the risk of diagnosis errors. Medical staff may fail to monitor a patient adequately or to observe changes or worsening symptoms. They may fail to note changes in a patient’s chart that would provide insight for subsequent providers. A hospital may discharge a patient after conservative treatment without providing clear follow-up plans or warnings about when to seek further care.

When a Westland Hospital Can Be Held Legally Responsible for Malpractice

In addition to misdiagnoses, many other situations involving negligent medical care can lead to a medical malpractice claim. An attorney will review your case and medical records carefully to determine whether you may have a case.

Hospitals can be liable for the negligence and mistakes of their employees. They can also face liability for their own systemic failures and institutional policies, such as chronic understaffing, insufficient training, poor supervision, and inadequate safety protocols.

The Federal Office of Inspector General reported in a 2022 review that 25% of Medicare patients experienced adverse events and temporary harm during hospital stays during their study period, 43% of which were preventable.

Some examples of hospital errors that often lead to medical malpractice claims are:

• Diagnostic delay or missed diagnosis, including failure to order appropriate tests or follow up on abnormal results.
• Medication errors, such as giving the wrong dosage or prescribing the wrong medication. 
• Procedural or surgical errors, such as retained items, wrong-site surgery, and other similar complications.
• Anesthesia errors, including dosing problems and inadequate monitoring.
• Failure to monitor, such as a medical professional provider’s delayed response.
• Delayed escalation of care, including delayed specialist consults or failure to transfer to a higher level of care.
• Hospital-acquired infections caused by preventable lapses in infection control.
• Falls, pressure injuries, and mobility-related injuries due to risk management failures.

These categories, on their own, do not prove liability. They help identify where to examine the chart, staffing, orders, and timeline. Diagnostic errors deserve specific attention because they often appear to be a judgment call until a careful review of a patient’s timeline reveals missed opportunities.

A bad outcome does not automatically mean a provider committed malpractice. Complications can occur even when clinicians do everything correctly. A malpractice claim becomes viable when the proof shows a departure from what reasonably careful hospital providers and staff would have done under similar circumstances, and that departure caused measurable harm.

Red Flags That Suggest a Preventable Hospital Error May Have Occurred

People often sense that something went wrong, even if they can’t identify a specific mistake. Many patients describe repeatedly complaining of worsening symptoms or a sudden change in condition that did not trigger a meaningful reassessment. An experienced attorney can review a patient’s records to identify objective signals that correspond with a patient’s concerns.

Examples of red flags that often justify a focused, expert review of a patient’s chart and timeline include:

• A sudden decline after a documented warning sign, with little evidence of reassessment.
• Lack of follow-up or communication about abnormal test results.
• Conflicting documentation, such as notes that do not match the recorded vital signs or lab trends.
• Rapid medication changes without clear clinical reasoning or monitoring for side effects.
• Delayed consults, imaging, or transfer to a higher level of care.
• New symptoms documented without an appropriate workup.
• A major emergency shortly after discharge, such as a patient’s return to the hospital within days with the same complaints.

A red flag is not the same as proof. However, it can be the starting point for a case evaluation that either confirms the care met the standard or identifies a provable deviation that caused harm.

What a Plaintiff Must Prove in a Michigan Hospital Malpractice Case

Hospital malpractice claims require a disciplined approach because the burden of proof is specific. A claimant must provide evidence showing the hospital owed them a duty of care, breached that duty, and caused harm that resulted in damages.

They must show what reasonably careful providers and hospital staff would have done in the same or similar circumstances and how the hospital’s care fell short. They must establish that an injury resulted from a hospital’s breach of its duty rather than merely occurring in the same time period. Finally, they must provide evidence of the value of their damages.

Michigan medical malpractice claims also involve technical procedural requirements, starting from the very beginning. Plaintiffs must file a Notice of Intent before filing a lawsuit and include an affidavit of merit signed by a qualified health professional with their complaint. Filing errors can threaten a case regardless of how strong the underlying claims are.

Strong cases usually have a few traits in common:

• The patient’s chart supports a clear chronology of events and care decisions.
• The provider’s deviation from the acceptable standard of care is identifiable and not based solely on hindsight.
• The harm is concrete and medically explainable.
• Expert review supports both the standard-of-care theory and the causal link to the injury.

An experienced Michigan medical malpractice attorney can evaluate whether you may have a claim against a Westland hospital. If so, they will work with you to gather evidence and build a strong case.

Critical Evidence in a Westland Hospital Malpractice Investigation

Hospitals generate extensive documentation, and the quality of the case often depends on obtaining the right documents early and organizing them effectively. Many families only receive partial records in response to their initial request. Hospital cases frequently require full chart components that a provider may not include in their response to a basic release.

A thorough investigation often focuses on the following records and data:

• The complete medical chart, including progress notes, nursing notes, and consultation notes.
• Medication administration records and pharmacy profiles, including timing and dose details.
• Nursing flowsheets, vital sign trends, intake and output, and monitoring documentation.
• Laboratory results and trend data that show changes over time.
• Diagnostic orders, reports, and testing results, with time stamps showing when results were available.
• Operative reports, procedure notes, and anesthesia records.
• Rapid response or code documentation when a patient deteriorates.
• Discharge instructions, follow-up plans, and communications around discharge readiness.
• Policies, protocols, and staffing or assignment information when system failures are at issue.

Proving malpractice begins with a qualified expert reviewing a patient’s medical records. Their testimony is crucial to establishing what should have happened, what did happen, and how that gap resulted in harm.

Experienced attorneys conduct a comprehensive evaluation and create a clear timeline from these materials. That timeline often reveals whether providers promptly recognized a patient’s symptoms, ordered appropriate tests and acted on the results, adequately monitored the patient’s condition, and reasonably escalated care.

How Our Sommers Schwartz, P.C., Westland Hospital Malpractice Attorneys Handle Michigan Claims

The attorneys at Sommers Schwartz, P.C., evaluate potential hospital malpractice claims using a structured medical and legal review.

The first step is to gather the necessary records to build a reliable chronology. These include the full inpatient record, medication administration details, and time-stamped data showing the patient’s progression.

Once they have the records, they identify the critical decision points. Hospital errors usually occur at identifiable moments such as triage, diagnostic workup, handoff, medication administration, post-procedure monitoring, escalation decisions, and discharge planning. A strong case theory identifies which decision point failed, what should have been done under accepted practice, and how this failure caused the patient’s injury.

Expert review plays a central role in hospital malpractice cases. Qualified medical experts are necessary to establish the applicable standard of care. They will carefully review a patient’s records to determine whether a provider’s deviation from the applicable standard caused the patient’s injuries.

This type of review also identifies cases where the evidence does not support a provable deviation, even though the outcome was devastating. An expert’s review can provide clarity to a patient and their family and help avoid years of litigation for cases that lack sufficient proof of wrongdoing.

If an expert review identifies potential malpractice, our attorneys will help you build a strong case against the responsible parties and pursue compensation for your damages.

Damages in Hospital Malpractice Cases

Damages in hospital malpractice cases can be substantial because the harm is often severe. Many cases involve permanent disability, loss of independence, the need for long-term care, or loss of life. Economic damages are based on records and expert testimony. These often include:

• Past and future medical expenses.
• Rehabilitation and therapy costs.
• Necessary assistive equipment.
• In-home care or facility care needs.

There is no limit on the amount of economic damages a plaintiff can recover in a hospital malpractice case. A malpractice attorney may introduce many types of documentation to establish the full scope of these damages, including billing records, treating physician statements, therapy notes, employment records, and life care planning analyses.

Non-economic damages are another component of many medical malpractice claims. These include pain and suffering and loss of a normal life. Although Michigan law limits the amount of non-economic damages a medical malpractice plaintiff can recover, an experienced attorney can help you build the best possible case to maximize your recovery.

Steps To Take After a Suspected Hospital Error

Recovering from an injury often requires time off from work and ongoing treatment. Securing the compensation you deserve helps ensure you have the resources you need to make a full recovery. Some steps to take after a hospital error include:

• Request your complete medical records.
• Start keeping a timeline of your symptoms and any important conversations with your healthcare team.
• Take pictures or save your pharmacy receipts and all discharge documents.
• Document missed work and work restrictions with dates and supporting notes.
• Follow up with recommended specialists.
• Avoid signing broad authorizations or giving recorded statements to anyone other than your attorney. 

Pursuing a lawsuit against a hospital can feel intimidating, especially when the institution has deep pockets and substantial legal resources. Hiring an experienced medical malpractice attorney helps level the playing field. Your attorney will take charge of obtaining a complete set of records, conducting the medical review, and developing a claim strategy while you focus on healing.

Contact Our Westland Hospital Malpractice Attorneys at Sommers Schwartz, P.C., Today for a Free Case Review

If you have been harmed by a Westland hospital mistake, take action immediately. Your time to pursue a claim can be limited, so don’t take chances. Call Sommers Schwartz, P.C., at (800) 783-0989 or contact us online to schedule a free, confidential, no-obligation consultation. Our team will evaluate your case with care, discretion, and a disciplined approach to medical records and help you understand your options.

FAQS

Who can be held responsible in a hospital malpractice case?

Who is responsible in a medical malpractice case depends on many factors. You may be able to pursue legal claims against the hospital, the staff, nurses, physicians, and other individuals or entities that participated in your care.

What records should you gather after a suspected hospital error?

The most important records you should gather are your full patient chart, nursing notes, medication records, and imaging results. Billing and pharmacy records can also help substantiate the treatment you received. These records can help an attorney identify treatment errors or negligence that could substantiate a malpractice claim.

How do I get compensation in a medical malpractice case?

Filing a Michigan medical malpractice lawsuit allows a patient or their family to pursue compensation for actual financial losses, including medical costs and lost wages, as well as non-economic damages such as pain and suffering.