Recourse for victims
How about none? Unless there's easy money in it forget lawyers. And in Arkansas you have two years to do it. For medical malpractice anyway -
the Medical Industry owns politicians at the state level too. By all means get the evidence together and prepare a case. If nothing else you may
help someone else who does by some chance get a case to court. Slip-and-fall and automobile accidents are easier, and being able to file a case
and get a settlement offer is the preferred method. By all means try but expect to be disappointed.
Class actions against large industry entities sometimes succeed, if the right people have the connections and the money. The payout for the victims is not worth
the trouble, the lawyers of course do pretty well. But that requires multi-billion-dollar corporations with thousands of 'victims'. A little hospital in Arkansas
isn't worth anyone's trouble.
You can make a criminal complaint, as I will be doing, against the hospital personnel. If nothing else it will be in the public record. And the hospital or personnel
named will probably sue you. You can file complaints with the
State Medical Board (doctors),
State Nursing Board (nurses) and the
State Pharmacy Board (the hospital pharmacy).
My lawyer is looking over the ones in my case before they are submitted.
By all means do the above if you are willing to risk the consequences. Exposing the hospital is hard to do - there is zero news media interest. Even the prospect
for aspiring 'journalists' of making one's bones is unlikely be attractive.
As for warning potential victims, there are only about two somewhat effective public forums - Google reviews are the most widely seen, and if you have a Gmail account you can leave a
review on the hospital's Google listing if you are logged in to your Gmail account.
Anyone can do it, including your friends and family. Businesses do take the Google
reviews somewhat seriously, so much that they enter fake reviews (outright spam by fake accounts or reviews by their own personnel and acquaintances - against the rules but reporting
them rarely gets them removed) to counter the bad ones. While
Yelp
is not as influential as it once was it's worth putting in a review. And you may be sued. These are not nice people and they don't like having their lucrative racket threatened.
Regulatory authorities in Arkansas are listed in the
resources link. There seems to be no regulatory authority for hospital management so I recommend contacting the
attorney general and the governor. I will be doing so and will document the results or lack thereof. Complaints about doctors should to to the State Medical board but nurses and
other staff who behave badly should be reported to the state nursing board. In a case like mine in which I was injured by misapplication of medications which the pharmacy director
should have been aware of and reported so I will be lodging complaints against the nursing staff generally and one nurse in particular, and the pharmacy director.
Finally there is the matter of criminal acts of abuse, neglect or outright assault. I will be discussing this with my lawyer to see which law enforcement agency I should contact.
Perhaps the locals (city police department and county sheriff) and the state police. Not that I expect results but the complaints will be on the record.
Status: In progress
Last updated: Tue 30 Apr 2024 12:16:02 PM CDT : 1714497362
