Ben Taub Hospital Malpractice Lawyer

Top-Rated Hospital Negligence Lawyers for Ben Taub Patients and Families

The Types of Ben Taub Hospital Lawsuits Our Hospital Malpractice Attorneys Handle

Our hospital malpractice lawyers represent patients harmed at Ben Taub Hospital. We bring claims against the hospital district, the physicians who practice there, and the staff who care for patients on its units. The cases we see most often at a public trauma and teaching hospital like Ben Taub include:

• Emergency and trauma care errors. A serious condition can go unrecognized at triage, be misread on imaging, or wait too long for treatment. Hours lost that way can cost a patient the window in which the condition was still treatable, leaving permanent damage or worse. Our Houston failure to diagnose lawyers rebuild the hours after arrival from the triage record, the imaging, and the orders that followed.
• Surgical errors. A technical mistake during an operation, an injury nobody recognizes before the patient leaves the operating room, or information dropped in a handoff can cause lasting damage. Correcting it can mean further surgery, a longer stay, and additional recovery time. Our Houston surgical malpractice lawyers compare the operative report with the anesthesia record and the notes written afterward.
• Nursing and monitoring failures. On a busy inpatient unit, a change in a patient’s condition can go unnoticed, a warning sign can go unreported, or a medication can be given in error. A few hours can be the difference between a problem a patient recovers from and one that changes their life. Our Houston nursing malpractice lawyers work through the monitoring records, the shift notes, and the times each order was carried out.

While these are the claims we see most often, our hospital malpractice attorneys handle any valid medical negligence case that arises at this hospital.

About Ben Taub Hospital

Ben Taub Hospital is part of Harris Health, the system whose legal name is the Harris County Hospital District. Harris Health states in its own legal notices that it is a governmental entity, and its published history records the district as a political subdivision with taxing authority. It is a public hospital rather than a private one, and that status shapes how a claim against it has to be brought.

The hospital sits in the Texas Medical Center and has more than 400 licensed beds. The state lists it as a designated Level I trauma facility. Emergency and trauma patients are treated in its Ginni and Richard Mithoff Trauma Center.

Ben Taub is also a teaching hospital. Its medical staff is made up of physician faculty and residents from Baylor College of Medicine. A share of the care given there comes from physicians in training working under supervising faculty.

Harris Health runs two hospitals. The other is Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital in northeast Houston, a designated Level III trauma center with more than 200 licensed beds. Its physicians come from McGovern Medical School at UTHealth. Patients harmed at LBJ Hospital bring their claims under the same public rules that govern care at Ben Taub, and our attorneys represent those families too.

Can You File a Lawsuit Against Ben Taub Hospital, the Doctor, or Both?

You may be able to file a lawsuit against Ben Taub Hospital, against an individual provider, or against both, depending on who was responsible for the care. A public hospital is responsible for the negligence of its own employees, such as the nurses and technicians on its units. It is also responsible for decisions it makes as an institution, including how units are staffed and which safety systems are in place. Two features of how care is delivered here shape the rest of the answer.

The first is that Ben Taub trains physicians. Residents deliver much of the care there under faculty supervision. A lapse in that supervision can make the hospital or the faculty group responsible, not only the resident. The second feature is who employed each provider.

The physicians who practice at Ben Taub come through the hospital’s medical school affiliation. A patient has no way to tell from the bedside how any one of them is employed. Whether a given faculty physician is an employee of the hospital district depends on the arrangement behind that provider’s care, and the answer decides which rules apply. Whether you need a lawyer to sue a hospital, a physician group, or both, identifying every health care provider or facility involved comes first.

Chapter 74 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code also requires a written report from a qualified medical expert early in the case. Our Texas hospital negligence lawyers cover vicarious liability, corporate negligence, and how that report requirement works.

How Does the Texas Tort Claims Act Affect a Malpractice Claim Against Ben Taub Hospital?

The Texas Tort Claims Act governs a malpractice claim against Ben Taub Hospital. A claim against a governmental unit, such as a county hospital district, falls under that Act rather than under the rules that govern a private hospital. Chapter 101 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code is where those rules sit, and they are stricter than the ordinary ones.

Written notice of the claim generally has to reach the governmental unit within six months of the incident that caused the injury. The notice has to describe the injury, the time and place it happened, and the incident itself. The Act recognizes an exception where the unit already had actual notice of the injury or the death.

That six-month notice runs alongside the ordinary two-year deadline for filing a medical malpractice suit in Texas and does not replace it. A lawsuit against Ben Taub Hospital can be filed well inside the two-year deadline and still fail if the notice was never given.

The Act also limits the damages an injured patient can recover. Those limits sit far below what the same injury could support against a private hospital. Which limit applies depends on how the institution is classified under the Act. Working that out is one of the first steps in a case like this.

The choice of who to sue is binding once it is made. Filing against the governmental unit forever bars a later claim against the individual employee over the same care. Filing against the employee bars a later claim against the unit unless the unit consents. That is why identifying who employed each provider comes before anything is filed.

None of this makes a claim against a public hospital impossible. It does mean the weeks right after an injury carry more weight than they would in a private hospital claim, and calling early is what keeps your options open. Our Houston hospital malpractice lawyers explain in more detail how the Act applies to a government hospital.

How We Work With Injured Ben Taub Hospital Patients

The first call about an injury or a loss at Ben Taub Hospital reaches a member of our intake team. A relative can make that call for a patient who is not well enough to make it. What you remember of the care, the dates, and the people involved is enough to start with, and our team works to make sure you are heard.

Our team requests the complete medical records on your behalf. Our attorneys and medical professionals read the treatment notes, the monitoring records, the operative reports, and the medication orders together, to establish what was done and what was missed. If our hospital negligence lawyers take your case, we build it on what those records show and on the physicians who can explain them.

From there we handle every contact with the hospital, its representatives, and its lawyers, so you never have to deal with them yourself. Our board-certified patient advocates stay in contact with you and explain each development in plain language as it happens. Our hospital malpractice attorneys pursue a settlement that accounts for what the injury has taken from your family. When an offer does not reflect that, we are prepared to try the case.

If You or a Loved One Were Injured at Ben Taub, Speak With Our Medical Attorneys Today

Our team is here for you if care at Ben Taub Hospital, or at Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital, left you or someone you love worse off. Our hospital negligence lawyers will review what happened, tell you who may be responsible, and tell you which deadlines are already running. When we believe a bad outcome was not malpractice, we will say so plainly.

We perform a free case review to find out whether you have a valid claim against the hospital district, a provider, or both. What you tell us stays confidential, and you pay no fees or costs unless we win. Contact us to understand your options.