St. David’s South Austin Medical Center Malpractice Lawyer

Trial-Ready Hospital Negligence Attorneys for St. David’s South Austin Medical Center Patients and Families

The Types of St. David’s South Austin Medical Center Lawsuits Our Hospital Malpractice Attorneys Handle

Hastings Law Firm’s hospital malpractice lawyers handle St. David’s South Austin Medical Center lawsuits in Austin, Texas, over trauma and emergency care errors, surgical errors, and childbirth errors. We build each lawsuit from the full hospital chart and from the opinions of physicians who practice in the same fields as the providers involved.

The cases we see most often at a trauma hospital like St. David’s South Austin Medical Center include:

• Trauma and emergency care errors. A trauma evaluation can miss an internal bleed, a spinal or brain injury, or a second injury, and a needed scan may go unordered or be misread. A trauma patient’s worsening signs in intensive care can go unanswered, and an emergency patient can be sent home before a stroke, heart attack or sepsis is ruled out. Hours lost in that way can turn a treatable injury into a permanent disability or the loss of a loved one. Our Austin medical misdiagnosis lawyers place the trauma flow sheets, imaging reads and intensive care vital signs on a single timeline.
• Surgical errors. A nerve, blood vessel, bowel or other organ can be injured during orthopedic, open-heart, lung, GI, colorectal, urologic or robot-assisted surgery, or the wrong site can be operated on. Afterward, bleeding, a leak, an infection or an instrument left behind can go unnoticed, and so can a transplant patient’s rejection, infection or bleeding. Catching it late can mean another operation and additional recovery time. Our Austin surgical error lawyers read the operative and anesthesia records beside the recovery nursing notes and the transplant follow-up.
• Childbirth errors. A high-risk pregnancy can be watched less closely than it needed to be, fetal distress can be missed or answered too slowly, and a cesarean can come late. A mother’s hemorrhage or preeclampsia can be treated too late, and a newborn’s breathing, infection or blood sugar problem can go unrecognized in the NICU. An injury at birth can shape a child’s health for years and change daily life for the whole family. Our Austin birth injury lawyers study the fetal monitoring strips alongside the high-risk pregnancy records, the labor nursing notes and the NICU chart.

While these are the claim types we see most often, our hospital malpractice attorneys handle any valid medical negligence case that arises at this hospital. Ask us about any care at St. David’s South Austin that concerns you.

About St. David’s South Austin Medical Center on Ben White Boulevard

St. David’s South Austin Medical Center is a hospital at 901 W Ben White Blvd in Austin, Texas, whose trauma program the hospital describes as a Level II Trauma Center. The campus also has a Shock Trauma Intensive Care Unit, full-service maternity and newborn care, and a Level II Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

The state’s own roster agrees on the trauma level. The Texas Department of State Health Services lists St. David’s South Austin as a Major (Level II) trauma facility. St. David’s HealthCare also says its hospital emergency rooms, this one among them, are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Beyond trauma and emergency care, the hospital is one of the St. David’s HealthCare locations with a high-risk pregnancy unit. Its About Us page lists robot-assisted procedures and orthopedic, open-heart, lung, GI, general, colorectal and urologic surgery. The same page names cardiac, stroke and orthopedic programs and an adult transplant and cellular therapy program.

St. David’s HealthCare, whose website lists the hospital among its locations, calls itself a partnership of its national hospital operating partner HCA Healthcare with two local nonprofits, St. David’s Foundation and Georgetown Health Foundation. Our Austin medical malpractice lawyers take cases from every part of the city, and St. David’s Medical Center and St. David’s North Austin Medical Center are separate St. David’s HealthCare hospitals in Austin with pages of their own.

Can You File a Lawsuit Against St. David’s South Austin Medical Center, the Doctor, or Both?

You can file a lawsuit against St. David’s South Austin Medical Center, a doctor who treated you there, or both, depending on whose care caused your injury. Under Baptist Memorial Hospital System v. Sampson, a Texas hospital can be responsible for nurses and other staff it employs when they act within the scope of their work.

A physician who is not the hospital’s employee answers for their own care. The hospital shares responsibility for that physician only on proof of all three elements of ostensible agency. The patient must reasonably have believed the physician was a hospital employee, a belief the hospital created or knowingly allowed, and must have justifiably relied on it.

Who employed each provider is a question of fact, and the records answer it. A trauma case can pass through emergency physicians, trauma surgeons, anesthesiologists and intensive care nurses, and the answer can change from one provider to the next.

For families looking for a lawyer to sue a hospital in Texas, a claim over medical care is generally governed by Chapter 74 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. It requires written notice to each provider at least 60 days before suit, along with a qualified medical expert’s report on the care.

Not every hard outcome after a trauma or an operation is negligence, because medicine carries real risk. Where an injury could have been prevented, the providers responsible should be held accountable. Our Austin hospital malpractice lawyers review each provider’s part in the care and identify the ones a claim should include.

Does Each Provider in a St. David’s South Austin Trauma Case Start Its Own Texas Expert Report Deadline?

Each provider named as a defendant in a St. David’s South Austin trauma case generally starts its own Texas expert report deadline. Section 74.351 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code sets the report’s due date at 120 days after that defendant’s original answer is filed. A provider added to the case later, or answering later, has a date of its own.

One lawsuit can therefore carry several clocks at once. A claim might name the hospital for its nursing staff, an emergency physician, and a surgeon from a separate group, and each files its answer on its own schedule. The report goes to every physician or health care provider the claim names, along with each expert’s curriculum vitae, which records the expert’s training and practice. For an injured patient or family, that means a claim can go forward against one provider while it ends against another, so knowing early every provider who took part in the care protects the whole claim.

The affected parties can agree in writing to extend the date for serving a report. Where a report was served but a court finds elements of it deficient, the statute lets the court allow a single 30-day extension so the claimant can correct it.

Each provider also has its own window to challenge a report. A provider whose conduct the report implicates must object to its sufficiency by the later of 21 days after the report is served or 21 days after that provider answered. An objection that misses that window is waived.

Missing a provider’s date has a cost. If no report is served on that provider in time, the court must act on the provider’s motion, subject to the extension for deficient reports. It must award the provider reasonable attorney’s fees and court costs and dismiss the claim against that provider with prejudice, so the claim cannot be filed again.

When a trauma patient’s care passed through the emergency department, the trauma team, surgery and intensive care, our attorneys identify every provider early. We track the date each defendant answers and have qualified medical experts review the records before suit, so each report is ready on time.

How We Work With Injured St. David’s South Austin Medical Center Patients and Their Families

Hastings Law Firm’s hospital malpractice lawyers handle claims in Austin, Texas, for St. David’s South Austin Medical Center patients and families, from the first phone call through settlement or trial. A member of our intake team takes that call, and a spouse, parent or other relative can call for a patient who cannot, or for a newborn.

Share what you know about the care, the units it moved through, and the people involved. Our team works to make sure you are heard, and what you tell us guides the records we request first.

We gather the complete records on your behalf. For trauma and surgical care, that includes emergency department and trauma flow sheets, imaging and lab results, intensive care nursing notes, operative and anesthesia records, and transplant follow-up notes. For a birth, it includes prenatal and high-risk pregnancy records, fetal monitoring strips, labor and delivery nursing notes, and NICU records. Medication administration records, admission and discharge dates, discharge instructions and billing statements complete the file.

Our attorneys and medical professionals read those records together to establish what each provider did, what was missed, and when. After our hospital negligence lawyers take your case, every conversation with the hospital, its insurer and its lawyers goes through us. Our board-certified patient advocates keep in touch as the case moves and answer your questions whenever something significant happens. We press for a settlement that reflects what the injury has taken from your family, and a jury trial remains the path when an offer falls short.

If You or a Loved One Were Injured at St. David’s South Austin, Speak With Our Medical Attorneys Today

Hastings Law Firm’s hospital negligence lawyers take malpractice claims in Austin, Texas, for patients and families hurt by care at St. David’s South Austin Medical Center. We perform a free case review to find out whether you have a valid claim, and what you share with us stays confidential.

Our team is here for you. You pay no fee unless we win. Let us help you find the answers you deserve.