Fort Lauderdale Medical Malpractice Lawyer
You went in for treatment and came out worse, and nobody at the hospital will give you a straight answer about why. We can take it from here. Call 954-522-5800 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our Fort Lauderdale personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Broward County since 1993.
Medical Malpractice claims in Fort Lauderdale
The hospital put its own risk team on it early, and the records you need are held by the people you would be bringing a claim against. Meanwhile you are paying for the care that was supposed to fix the problem, and for the care it now takes to put it right. Finding out what actually happened is our job, and it starts the day you call.
Broward Health and Memorial Healthcare System are both public hospital districts rather than private companies, which changes a malpractice claim against either of them from the ground up. Sovereign immunity caps what can be recovered at $200,000 for one person and $300,000 for one incident, written notice has to be presented to the agency before suit, and the agency gets months to investigate before anything can be filed. Anything above the cap requires the Legislature to pass a claims bill. None of that applies to the private hospitals in the same county, so the first question in a Broward case is which kind of institution treated you.
A Broward medical negligence claim cannot simply be filed. The complete records have to be obtained and reviewed by a qualified physician who will corroborate the claim in writing, and only then does the 90-day notice period begin. That work takes months, so the practical deadline sits well ahead of the legal one. The first question is always which institution, and which employer, was actually involved.
What to do after a medical malpractice in Fort Lauderdale
- Ask for your complete records, in writing, now. Not the discharge summary and not a portal printout, which is a fraction of the chart. Ask in writing for the complete record: physician and nursing notes, medication administration, vital signs and monitoring, orders, imaging and the reports on it, and laboratory results. You are entitled to it, it is the foundation of any review, and requesting it commits you to nothing.
- Write down the sequence while you still remember it. Who you saw and when, what you told them, what you were told, how long you waited and what changed. Names where you have them. Memory for this fades fast and it fades first for the timings, which is exactly what a review turns on. A family member’s notes made at the bedside are frequently the most useful document in the file.
- Do not sign anything broad. Requests for records are routine and usually fine. Broad authorizations, arbitration agreements and anything resembling a release are not, and they are sometimes presented alongside ordinary paperwork. Bring the document to somebody before signing it. Reading it costs nothing, and an arbitration agreement signed at a bedside can decide the case before it starts.
- Keep getting care, from somebody else if you need to. Nothing about a potential claim requires you to stay with a provider you no longer trust, and nothing about changing doctors damages a claim. What does damage one is a gap in treatment, because it becomes the argument that the harm resolved. Get the problem addressed and let the records of that treatment be made.
- Ask early, because this claim cannot be started late. A medical case cannot simply be filed. The records have to be gathered and reviewed by a qualified physician who is willing to corroborate the claim in writing, and only then does the formal notice go out. That work takes months and costs real money before anything is filed. The practical deadline is therefore a long way ahead of the legal one.
Where these happen in Fort Lauderdale
Broward delivers a great deal of its medicine outside a hospital, and the setting decides who employed the person who made the decision. That is not a technicality here. It is frequently the whole case.
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Freestanding emergency departments and urgent care
Broward has a large number of both, and patients regularly cannot tell which one they walked into.
- A facility that looks like an emergency room and may not be staffed or equipped like one
- Decisions to treat and discharge rather than to transfer, which is where the harm usually sits
- Transfer timing and the communication that went with it, documented in two separate records
- Ownership and staffing arrangements that decide who the defendant actually is
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The physician who treated you may not work for the hospital
Emergency physicians, hospitalists, radiologists and anesthesiologists in this county are frequently employed by contracted groups rather than by the institution whose name is on the building.
- Contracted staffing groups, each with its own insurance and its own records
- Agency and locum coverage, particularly on nights and weekends
- Credentialing files, which show what the institution knew about a provider before it let them work
- The distinction that decides both the deadline and the value where a public district is involved
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Outpatient surgery and procedure centers
A great deal of surgery in Broward happens in a licensed center or an office rather than a hospital, with a different level of monitoring behind it.
- Recovery and discharge criteria, and whether they were actually applied
- Monitoring during and after anesthesia, which is where these cases usually turn
- Transfer arrangements for a patient who deteriorates, and how long they took
- Policies and protocols in force on the day, which we can get and are frequently not followed
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Labor and delivery
Obstetric claims run on records that are unusually good, because almost everything is monitored continuously and time-stamped.
- Fetal monitoring strips, which record the period before a decision was made rather than after it
- The interval between a concerning tracing and the response to it, measurable to the minute
- Nursing escalation, and whether anybody with authority was actually called
- A claim for a child that runs on a different timetable from an adult’s
What causes them
- A cancer found later than it should have been, because a symptom, a scan or a result was not followed up
- A heart attack or a stroke sent home from an emergency department as something else
- Sepsis missed while a patient was in front of somebody, which is the most preventable death in a hospital
- A deteriorating patient whose observations were charted and not escalated to anybody who could act
- Surgery on the wrong site or the wrong side, and instruments or sponges left behind
The injuries we see, and what each one turns on
A cancer at a later stage than it should have been
The harm in a delayed diagnosis case is rarely that treatment became impossible. It is that a curable disease became a chronic one, or that a treatment which would have been modest became extensive. Proving it means establishing what stage the disease was at when it should have been found, which is done from the imaging and the pathology rather than from argument, and it is why these cases turn on the studies that already exist.
Brain injury from oxygen deprivation
Airway and monitoring failures, cardiac arrest that was not responded to quickly enough, and delivery complications all produce the same category of injury. It is frequently catastrophic and permanent, and the claim becomes a life care case rather than a medical bills case, priced from decades of attendant care rather than from what has already been spent.
Sepsis and what it leaves behind
People survive sepsis and are not the same afterward. Amputation, kidney failure requiring dialysis, and a cognitive and physical decline that does not reverse are all common outcomes, and the treatment involved is measured in months. The negligence is usually not a wrong decision but a slow one, which is proved from the timings in the chart.
What Florida law requires you to prove
The presuit process, in order
A medical negligence suit cannot be filed in Florida until the presuit requirements of Chapter 766 have been met. The records are gathered and reviewed, and a qualified medical expert in the relevant specialty has to provide a verified written opinion corroborating that there are reasonable grounds, under Fla. Stat. § 766.203. Only then does written notice of intent go to each prospective defendant, and under Fla. Stat. § 766.106 no suit may be filed for 90 days after that. The limitations period is tolled during the window, and both sides investigate informally within it.
The deadlines, which run differently here
Medical negligence has its own limitations rules under Fla. Stat. § 95.11: generally two years from when the injury was discovered or should have been discovered with due diligence, and in no event more than four years from the incident itself, with narrow exceptions including concealment and a separate provision for young children. Because the investigation and the corroborating opinion have to be completed before notice can even be sent, the working deadline sits well inside the statutory one.
Two things that surprise people
The modified comparative negligence bar Florida adopted in 2023, which stops anybody more than 50 percent responsible from recovering, expressly does not apply to medical negligence claims under Chapter 766. Separately, Article X, Section 25 of the Florida Constitution gives patients a right of access to records of adverse medical incidents made or received by a health care facility or provider. It is an unusually powerful right, it is underused, and it is one of the first requests we make.
The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide medical malpractice page rather than being restated in every market.
How we prove it in Broward County
Everything in a medical case comes from the record, and a patient request rarely produces the record. What arrives is a summary layer. The list below is what has to be asked for by name.
- The complete chart: physician and nursing notes, orders, medication administration, vital signs and monitoring
- The actual imaging files rather than the reports written on them, so they can be read again independently
- The electronic record audit trail, showing who opened what and when, and whether anything was added afterward
- Records of adverse medical incidents, which patients have a constitutional right of access to in Florida
- Policies, protocols and clinical pathways in force at that facility on that date
- Staffing rosters and assignment sheets for the shift, which answer whether anybody was available
- Credentialing and privileging files for the providers involved
- The employment or contracting arrangement for every provider, which decides who the defendant is
All of that goes to a physician in the relevant specialty for review before anything is filed, at the firm’s expense. Where the review does not support a claim, we say so. It is the reason competent firms turn down more medical cases than they take.
Who would handle your case
Being hurt in Fort Lauderdale is hard enough without working out the legal side on your own. The trial lawyers below have handled medical malpractice claims across Florida since 1993, and one of them will take yours from the first call to the last check. They will tell you what your case is worth and why, and they will be straight with you about the parts that are hard.
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Richard P. Pravato Founding & Managing Attorney Board Certified in Civil Trial Law by The Florida Bar since 2004, and by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Injury cases exclusively since 1996. Full profile → -
Brett J. Yonon Senior Trial Attorney Selected to Florida Super Lawyers in 2024 and 2025. Nearly two decades in Florida courts, including a $3.5 million funeral home negligence verdict. Full profile →
How insurance companies handle these claims
Medical files are not handled by an ordinary adjuster. There is generally a risk manager involved from the day the incident is reported internally, frequently before the patient has any idea something went wrong, and counsel is assigned early.
- It was a known complication
- Sometimes it genuinely was, and a bad outcome on its own is not negligence. Medicine carries risk that no amount of care removes. The question is narrower: whether the care fell below what a reasonably prudent similar provider would have delivered, and whether that failure caused the harm. Those are two separate elements, both have to be proved, and a corroborating physician review is what answers them honestly rather than hopefully.
- A sympathetic call from risk management, early
- The conversation is genuine and the person making it is also gathering information. Anything said in it is recorded somewhere. There is no obligation to give an account of what happened to the institution you may have a claim against, and no harm at all in saying that you are not discussing it yet.
- The records arrive incomplete
- What comes back to a patient request is frequently the summary layer rather than the chart. Nursing notes, medication administration records, monitoring strips, order histories and the actual imaging files rather than the reports on them all have to be asked for specifically. The electronic record also keeps an audit trail showing who opened what and when, and whether anything was added after the fact, which we can check, and sometimes it is.
What a claim can include
The cost of putting it right
The corrective surgery, the extended treatment and the care that would not have been needed had the first thing gone as it should. It is the head of loss most specific to these cases and it is documented by the providers who came afterward.
Medical care, past and future
Everything already billed and what the treating physicians say is still ahead. In a catastrophic case the future is the claim, and it is quantified by a professional rather than estimated.
Lost income and lost earning capacity
Wages missed, and separately what somebody can no longer earn. Where the injured person is a child, the loss is an entire working life and is calculated by an economist.
Why Wolf & Pravato in Fort Lauderdale
A Broward medical negligence case is filed in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit at the Broward County Courthouse, and this office has worked in it since 1993. These claims are expensive to investigate before a word is filed, which is the practical reason to ask a firm early whether it has actually paid for a review rather than merely looked at a file.
Richard Pravato has been Board Certified in Civil Trial law by The Florida Bar since 2004. The Bar lists 861 lawyers in the state holding it against a membership over 109,000. What it means in practice is that the other side knows the file can go in front of a jury, and files that can go to trial are priced differently from files that cannot.
The first conversation is free. We are paid out of the recovery or not at all, and if we do not think there is a claim worth bringing we will tell you that rather than take it.
Fort Lauderdale medical malpractice questions
How do I know whether I was at a real emergency room?
Frequently you cannot tell from the building, and it matters. A freestanding emergency department, an urgent care center and a hospital emergency room are licensed differently, staffed differently and equipped differently, and the standard applied to a decision depends on which one you were in. The licensing record answers it, along with the discharge paperwork. It is one of the first things we check.
The hospital says the doctor was not their employee.
That is a common answer and it is frequently accurate on paper, which does not end the claim. Emergency physicians, hospitalists, radiologists and anesthesiologists are often employed by contracted groups, each carrying its own insurance. There may also be a claim against the institution itself over credentialing, staffing or its own protocols. Establishing who employed whom is early work rather than a late surprise.
How much does it cost to have my case reviewed?
Nothing to you. The record gathering and the physician review happen at our expense during the presuit investigation, and our fee comes out of a recovery or does not exist. What that means practically is that we cannot review every case that is brought to us, and that when a review does not support a claim we will tell you rather than carry it along.
How long do I have to bring a medical malpractice claim in Florida?
Medical negligence runs on its own limitations rules, separate from ordinary negligence, and the presuit notice period tolls them. Because the investigation and expert review have to be completed before notice can even be sent, the practical deadline is much earlier than the statutory one. Ask early rather than assuming you have years.
Do I need a medical expert before I can sue?
Yes. Chapter 766 requires a corroborating written opinion from a qualified medical expert that there are reasonable grounds to believe negligence occurred. That review happens at our expense during the presuit investigation, and if the expert does not support the claim, we tell you so.
The questions that come up on every kind of claim, deadlines, fees, recorded statements and fault, are answered on our Florida injury claim FAQ.
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Tell us what happened
A lawyer will listen, tell you what Florida law does with those facts, and be straight with you about whether it is worth bringing. We are at 2101 W Commercial Blvd, Suite 1500, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309.