Texas Children’s Hospital Malpractice Lawyer

Trial-Ready Hospital Negligence Attorneys for Texas Children’s Patients and Families

The Types of Texas Children’s Hospital Lawsuits Our Hospital Malpractice Attorneys Handle

Hastings Law Firm handles Texas Children’s Hospital malpractice lawsuits for children and mothers in Houston, Texas. We bring claims against the hospital itself, against its nurses and staff, and against the physician groups whose doctors treat children there. Our attorneys handle claims over childbirth and newborn intensive care injuries, pediatric surgery errors, and missed or delayed pediatric diagnoses.

The cases we see most often at a children’s and women’s hospital like Texas Children’s include:

• Childbirth and newborn intensive care injuries. Warning signs during labor can go unanswered, a decision to deliver can come too late, or a newborn’s oxygen level or infection can go unrecognized in intensive care. A mother or a baby can be left with permanent damage, and the years that follow can bring therapy, equipment, and specialist treatment a family never planned for. Our Houston birth injury lawyers work through the labor and delivery record, the fetal monitoring data, and the newborn’s intensive care chart.
• Pediatric surgery errors. A child’s smaller anatomy leaves little margin for a technical mistake, a dosing error, or an injury that goes unrecognized before the child leaves the operating room. Correcting it can take further operations and additional recovery time, and some of the damage lasts. Our Houston surgical malpractice lawyers compare the operative and anesthesia records against the monitoring that followed.
• Missed and delayed pediatric diagnosis. A young child cannot always describe what is wrong, and a serious condition can be read as something minor and sent home. The delay can close the window in which the condition could still be treated, and the injury that follows can be permanent. Our Houston pediatric malpractice lawyers trace every visit, examination, and test result to establish when the problem should have been caught.

While these are the more common claim types, our hospital malpractice attorneys handle any valid medical negligence case that arises at this hospital.

About Texas Children’s Hospital

Texas Children’s Hospital is a Houston-based pediatric and women’s health system and a charitable, not-for-profit organization. It is not a government facility. Its main campus is in the Texas Medical Center, where it serves as the primary pediatric training site for Baylor College of Medicine.

It is one of the nation’s largest pediatric and women’s health care organizations, and thousands of babies are born in its hospitals each year. The state designates its Houston campus a Level IV maternal facility, the highest level Texas gives. That campus and The Woodlands also hold the state’s highest neonatal intensive care designation.

Because Texas Children’s is a system of hospitals across greater Houston, harm can arise at a community campus as readily as at the main one. Its Houston-area hospital campuses include:

• Texas Children’s Hospital, Texas Medical Center (the flagship)
• Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women, in the Texas Medical Center
• Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus, in west Houston
• Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands

Can You File a Lawsuit Against Texas Children’s Hospital, the Doctor, or Both?

You may be able to file a lawsuit against Texas Children’s Hospital, the physicians who treated your child, or both, depending on who was responsible for the harm. The hospital is responsible for the negligence of its own employees, the nurses, technicians and therapists who deliver a child’s daily care.

It carries separate responsibility for its institutional choices, from how units are staffed to the safety systems meant to protect patients. How a children’s hospital of this kind is staffed shapes the rest of the answer, in two ways.

Texas Children’s is the primary pediatric training site for a medical school, so part of a child’s care comes from resident physicians and fellows working under supervising faculty. A failure in that supervision can rest with the hospital or with the faculty group, not only with the trainee at the bedside. The other feature is who employs the physicians.

Many of the physicians who practice there hold appointments with the medical school rather than working as hospital employees, and other specialists may practice through their own groups. Who a physician answers to does not decide whether a claim exists, though it does decide who is named as a defendant and how the claim is proven. A parent looking for a lawyer to sue a hospital, a physician group, or both needs every health care provider and facility involved identified first.

Texas law adds a step of its own. Chapter 74 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code requires a qualified medical expert’s written report early in every claim. Our Houston hospital malpractice lawyers go through corporate negligence, vicarious liability, the contractor defense, and what that report must contain. Our Houston medical malpractice lawyers also represent patients injured at other Houston hospitals, including St Luke’s Hospital at the Vintage and Woman’s Hospital of Texas.

How Long Do Parents Have to File a Malpractice Claim for a Child Injured at Texas Children’s in Texas?

Parents generally have two years to file a malpractice claim for a child injured at Texas Children’s Hospital. The deadline runs from the date of the negligent act, though the day the related treatment ended can also matter. Texas gives a child’s claim one narrow allowance beyond that rule.

A child who was under 12 years old when the negligence occurred generally has until their 14th birthday to file. Texas courts have held that the open courts guarantee in the Texas Constitution allows more time when that deadline would end a child’s claim before the child could file it. A child who was 12 or older also needs the deadline reviewed rather than assumed to follow the adult rule. Texas law does not give every child until age 18, and it applies no discovery rule for an injury recognized later.

A separate ten-year limit cuts off most claims that are not brought within ten years of the care, and it reaches a child’s claim too. Texas courts have recognized narrow exceptions to that outer limit in specific circumstances involving a very young child.

Extra time is not a reason to wait. A claim has to be investigated before it is filed, and that takes the complete records and a qualified physician’s written opinion. Sending each provider written notice before suit adds 75 days to the two-year deadline. Because the date depends on how old your child was, our Texas medical malpractice statute of limitations guide explains how these deadlines and their narrow exceptions work.

How We Work With Families of Injured Texas Children’s Hospital Patients

Hastings Law Firm handles hospital malpractice claims for families of Texas Children’s Hospital patients in Houston, Texas. Our attorneys and medical professionals study the full medical record of the child’s care, and our board-certified patient advocates keep parents informed throughout the case.

Your first call about a child’s injury goes to a member of our intake team. Either parent can make it, and so can another family member who was there for the care.

Tell us what happened and where, and name the providers you can remember. Our team works to make sure you are heard, and that first account is what the review is built on.

The records come next, and our team requests the complete file on your family’s behalf. Our attorneys and medical professionals read the delivery and nursing records, the monitoring data, the operative notes, and the medication orders. Each one is measured against what a careful pediatric team should have done. When our hospital negligence lawyers take a case, it is built on what those records prove and on the physicians who can walk a jury through them.

As your attorneys, we take over every contact with the hospital, its insurer and its lawyers, so no parent has to face them alone. Our board-certified patient advocates stay in contact with your family and put each development in plain language when it arrives. Our hospital malpractice attorneys pursue a settlement measured by what the injury will cost your child over a lifetime. If the offer does not match that, we are prepared to take the case to a jury.

If You or a Loved One Were Injured at Texas Children’s, Speak With Our Medical Attorneys Today

Hastings Law Firm handles hospital malpractice claims in Houston, Texas, for children left worse off by care at Texas Children’s Hospital or one of its other Houston-area campuses. Our hospital negligence lawyers will hear the whole account and explain where responsibility may lie. If we believe a bad outcome was not malpractice, you will hear that from us too.

Our team is here for you. We perform a free case review to find out whether you have a valid claim, and the conversation is confidential. You pay no fees or costs unless we win. Let us help you find the answers you deserve.