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Mom fell out of bed at the hospital and something really bad happened to her. Can you get the
hospital incident report? You want to learn whether you can? Come join me. Hi. I’m Gerry
Oginski. I’m a New York medical malpractice and personal injury trial attorney practicing
law here in the state of New York. The short answer is you cannot get that hospital incident
report. The longer answer is you cannot get it and here’s why. A hospital incident report
is prepared in the ordinary course of business by hospital staff when something goes wrong.
And they are obligated to prepare that document that for the benefit for the injured patient
but for rather for the benefit of the hospital, to try to improve the quality control for
treatment of patients in order to prevent this type of incident from happening again.
Now you would think - it would make sense - that if a patient gets hurt during the course
of their treatment in a hospital and they bring a lawsuit seeking compensation, that
they would be entitled to get the document prepared by the people who are involved, who
are witnesses to the event, who now are recording information at the time it happened. But,
the public health law in New York prevents you or your attorney from getting that document.
That is protected and privileged by law. So what can you do instead to try and get that
information? One of things you‘ll be able to do is to find out the names of the people
who were involved, the names of the people who witnessed the event. And then you’ll
have an opportunity through your attorney to question those people at a deposition,
which is known as a question and answer session given under oath. It would be wonderful to
have a copy of the report which was made at the time the incident occurred. And now contrast
that with the testimony being given years later by the various witnesses who were involved.
This way if there were any inconsistencies we would be able to see that immediately and
be able to lock in the testimony of various witnesses with those inconsistencies. Unfortunately,
the law in New York does not allow us as the representatives, as the attorney for the injured
victim, to get copies of those hospital incident reports. There are certain limited exceptions
in which we can get copies of those reports but those are few and far in between. So why
do I tell you this? I tell you this to give you a little bit of an insight into how these
types of cases work. To show you different issues that can arise in cases involving negligence,
cases involving medical negligence or medical malpractice against a doctor or a hospital.
And these issues typically and frequently will arise during the course of this type
of ligation. And if you have legal questions, what I want you to do is to pick up the phone
and call me. I answer legal questions just like these every single day and I welcome
your call. You can reach me at 516-487-8207 or by email at lawmed10@yahoo.com. I’m Gerry
Oginski, here in New York. Thanks for watching.