Texas Health Hurst-Euless-Bedford Malpractice Lawyer

Trial-Ready Hospital Negligence Attorneys for Texas Health HEB Patients and Families

The Types of Texas Health HEB Lawsuits Our Hospital Malpractice Attorneys Handle

For patients and families in Bedford, Texas, Hastings Law Firm’s hospital malpractice lawyers take on Texas Health HEB lawsuits involving childbirth, emergency and trauma care, surgery, and anesthesia. We build each case from the patient’s complete chart and the order in which the care was given. With qualified medical experts, our attorneys then show where that care fell short and what the harm has taken from the family.

The cases we see most often at a trauma and maternity hospital like Texas Health HEB include:

• Labor, delivery, and newborn care errors. Signs of trouble on the fetal heart monitor can go unanswered, or a cesarean can come too late. After delivery, a mother’s bleeding, infection or blood pressure can be missed, and in the NICU a newborn’s struggle to breathe, low blood sugar or infection can go unrecognized. Because harm at birth can shape a child’s whole life, our birth injury lawyers for Fort Worth families line up the monitoring strips with the labor and NICU notes.
• Emergency and trauma care errors. Injuries from a crash or fall can go undetected on a scan or untreated, and a heart attack, stroke or brain bleed can be caught too late. Sending a patient home before a dangerous cause is excluded can cost the time in which treatment would still have worked. Our Fort Worth medical misdiagnosis lawyers set each scan and test result beside what the emergency team did next.
• Surgical and anesthesia errors. General surgery, spine surgery and neurosurgery can damage a nearby nerve, vessel or organ, and under anesthesia a drug, a dose or the airway can be mishandled. A patient who is not watched closely as anesthesia wears off, or whose bleeding or infection after surgery goes unnoticed, can face further surgery and additional recovery time. Our attorneys for Fort Worth surgical error claims compare the operative report with the anesthesia record and the recovery notes.

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

About Texas Health HEB on Hospital Parkway in Bedford

Texas Health Hurst-Euless-Bedford, whose full name is Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Hurst-Euless-Bedford, is a private nonprofit hospital at 1600 Hospital Parkway in Bedford, Texas. The hospital calls itself Texas Health HEB and is part of Texas Health Resources. Its services include an emergency room, trauma care, labor and delivery, newborn intensive care, neuroscience and heart care.

Its parent, Texas Health Resources, describes itself as a “faith-based, nonprofit health system.” The hospital calls itself “a designated Level III Trauma Center” on its page on the Texas Health website, which also says Texas Health HEB serves Northeast Tarrant County. The state’s roster of trauma facilities, kept by the Department of State Health Services, lists it at the Advanced (Level III) level.

Babies are delivered in the Siratt Women’s Center, and the hospital’s maternity page describes scheduled cesareans and inductions. For labor pain, it lists IV medication, epidurals and nitrous oxide. The same page names maternal-fetal specialists, neonatologists and neonatal nurse practitioners on the medical staff, along with OB laborists.

The maternity page speaks of “the Level III NICU at Texas Health HEB,” and state rosters place the hospital at Level III for both maternal care and neonatal care. Texas Health HEB also runs a neuroscience program for neurological and neurosurgical conditions, and heart care that reaches from diagnostics to procedures.

Texas Health Springwood Behavioral Health sits on the same campus. One patient’s treatment may involve the emergency, trauma, obstetric, anesthesia, surgical, NICU and nursing teams, each recording its share in the chart.

Our Bedford medical malpractice lawyers represent patients and families throughout the city. We also handle claims involving Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital, another Texas Health Resources hospital in Arlington, and Baylor Scott & White Grapevine in nearby Grapevine.

Can You File a Lawsuit Against Texas Health Hurst-Euless-Bedford, the Doctor, or Both?

A patient or family can bring a lawsuit against Texas Health Hurst-Euless-Bedford, against a doctor who treated the patient there, or against both. The right defendant depends on who gave the care that caused the harm and who employed that person. Under Chapter 74 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, each is a health care liability claim with its own requirements.

Under Texas law, a hospital can be held responsible for negligence by an employee, such as a nurse, acting within the scope of employment. Each physician is responsible for the care he or she personally gave. Who employed or contracted a given doctor, nurse or technician is a fact question, answered from the records and the billing.

Texas Health publishes a disclaimer stating that “Doctors on the medical staffs practice independently” and are not its employees or agents. That disclaimer is the system’s general statement, and it does not decide any one patient’s case. The same employment question also decides who answers for an epidural or anesthesia error.

A Chapter 74 claim generally needs a qualified medical expert’s report within 120 days after each defendant answers. Each provider must also get written notice at least 60 days before suit. Early on, a lawyer to sue a hospital works out who employed each provider, because that answer decides who is named in the claim. Our Fort Worth hospital malpractice lawyers bring these claims for patients throughout Tarrant County.

Some injuries happen even when every provider does the job right, because medicine carries risk. When a preventable injury does happen, those responsible for it should be held accountable.

Who Answers for an Epidural or Anesthesia Error at Texas Health HEB Under Texas Law?

At Texas Health HEB, the anesthesiologist who places an epidural or puts a patient under answers for their own care. Texas Health HEB answers for that doctor’s mistake only as the doctor’s employer or through ostensible agency, whose three elements Baptist Memorial Hospital System v. Sampson sets out. The hospital also answers for monitoring by nurses it employs, within the scope of their work.

The hospital’s maternity page refers to “the doctor on the medical staff who administers your anesthesia,” who visits before a cesarean. It also places “an anesthesiologist on the medical staff” in the operating room. Texas Health’s disclaimer, for its part, says medical staff doctors practice independently, so neither statement settles who employed or contracted the anesthesiologist in a given patient’s care.

Ostensible agency lets a hospital answer for an independent doctor when the patient proves three things. The patient reasonably believed the doctor worked for the hospital. That belief came from the hospital, either by presenting the doctor as its own or by knowingly allowing the doctor to appear that way. The patient also relied on that belief, and the reliance was justified.

Being treated at the hospital is not enough by itself, so proof of those elements comes from paperwork and from the bedside. We look at the consent and admission forms the patient signed, who billed for the anesthesia, and how the doctor was introduced to the patient and family.

The nurses’ part of the care is a separate question from the anesthesiologist’s. After an epidural or surgery, nurses watch the patient as the anesthesia takes effect and wears off. Their monitoring records show what they saw and when they called for help. When the hospital employs those nurses and their watching falls short, the hospital can answer for that negligence whatever the anesthesiologist’s arrangement.

How We Work With Injured Texas Health HEB Patients and Their Families

Hastings Law Firm’s hospital malpractice lawyers work with patients and families in Bedford, Texas, on claims over care at Texas Health HEB, from the first call through settlement or trial. A member of our intake team takes that first call, which a relative may make for a patient who cannot. The intake team records what went wrong, where in the hospital it happened, and which providers took part.

Next, our team requests the complete medical records for you. Our attorneys and medical professionals study the emergency and trauma charts, the imaging, and the labor and delivery records alongside the fetal monitoring strips. They also go through the anesthesia record and consent forms, NICU and operative records, nursing notes and discharge papers.

When our hospital negligence lawyers accept your case, it rests on those records and on the qualified experts who can explain them. From then on, we deal with the hospital, its insurer and its lawyers. Our board-certified patient advocates reach out when something important happens and answer your questions in plain language. We push for a settlement that matches your family’s losses, and when an offer falls short, we are prepared to take your case to a jury.

If You or a Loved One Were Injured at Texas Health HEB, Speak With Our Medical Attorneys Today

Hastings Law Firm takes on hospital malpractice claims for Bedford, Texas, patients and families harmed by care at Texas Health HEB. We trace each step of that care to the provider responsible for it. Families then get a clear account from us of the claims Texas law allows them to bring.

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