Hospital Malpractice Lawyer in NYC

Attorney Michael Gunzburg

Who Needs a Hospital Malpractice Lawyer in New York City?

You need a hospital malpractice lawyer if institutional failures, inadequate policies, or systemic problems at a hospital caused you harm beyond individual doctor errors. Common situations include hospital-acquired infections from unsanitary conditions or failure to follow infection control protocols, medication errors from pharmacy mistakes or nurse administration failures, patient falls from inadequate supervision or unsafe conditions, pressure ulcers (bedsores) from neglect during extended hospital stays, wrong-site surgeries or patient misidentification from inadequate safety protocols, delays in treatment from emergency room overcrowding or inadequate staffing, equipment failures from poor maintenance or outdated technology, lack of supervision of residents and inexperienced staff causing preventable errors, premature discharge or inappropriate transfers that worsen your condition, and failure to have proper emergency response teams or equipment readily available. These cases occur across all five boroughs, from major teaching hospitals in Greenwich Village and the Upper East Side of Manhattan to community hospitals in Park Slope, overcrowded emergency rooms in Astoria, and understaffed facilities in Riverdale. If your condition worsened during hospitalization due to institutional failures rather than your underlying illness, you may have a hospital malpractice claim.

What to Expect When You Hire Our Hospital Malpractice Lawyer

Comprehensive Investigation of Hospital Systems and Policies

We examine the hospital's credentialing procedures, staffing levels at the time of your incident, training protocols, infection control policies, safety checklists, equipment maintenance records, and whether the hospital met Joint Commission and state health department standards.

Consultation with Hospital Administration and Patient Safety Experts

Our team retains experts in hospital administration, nursing standards, infection control, and patient safety who analyze whether the hospital's systems, policies, and procedures met industry standards and whether institutional failures contributed to your harm.

Review of All Medical Records and Incident Reports

We obtain your complete hospital chart, nursing notes, medication administration records, lab results, imaging studies, internal incident reports, quality assurance reviews, and any correspondence about safety concerns to identify patterns of negligence.

Identification of All Liable Parties

Hospital malpractice cases often involve multiple defendants including the hospital itself for corporate negligence, individual nurses, technicians, or other staff whose errors harmed you, supervising physicians who failed to oversee residents or staff, pharmacy departments for medication dispensing errors, and sometimes equipment manufacturers if defective devices contributed to your injury.

Aggressive Pursuit of Maximum Compensation

We fight for full recovery of medical expenses for treating complications caused by hospital negligence, lost wages and earning capacity, pain and suffering, loss of quality of life, and in cases of permanent disability or death, compensation for lifetime care needs or your family's losses.

Benefits of Hiring Michael Gunzburg, P.C. for Your Hospital Malpractice Case

Hold Hospitals Accountable for Inadequate Staffing, Poor Supervision, and Systemic Failures

Hospitals have a legal duty to maintain safe facilities, hire competent staff, provide adequate supervision, follow proper protocols, and ensure patient safety. When they prioritize profits over patients, cutting nursing staff to save money, failing to maintain equipment, ignoring infection control, or inadequately supervising inexperienced residents, people get hurt. We pursue claims for corporate negligence (the hospital's own failures) separate from the medical malpractice of individual providers. This might include failure to have enough nurses on duty causing delayed response to call buttons, inadequate credentialing allowing incompetent doctors to practice, failure to enforce safety protocols leading to wrong-site surgeries, or systemic problems like chronic emergency room overcrowding that delays treatment for heart attacks or strokes.

Proven Track Record Against New York City Hospitals

We've successfully represented thousands of medical malpractice clients over 39+ years and secured numerous multimillion-dollar verdicts and settlements. Our experience includes cases against major New York City hospitals, teaching institutions, and community hospitals across all five boroughs. We understand how hospitals operate, how they try to shift blame to individual doctors, and how to prove institutional negligence. We've handled cases involving hospital-acquired infections, medication errors, patient falls, surgical never-events, emergency room failures, and wrongful deaths from inadequate care. Our track record demonstrates our ability to take on even the largest hospital systems and their well-funded defense teams.

No Upfront Costs, You Pay Nothing Unless We Win Your Case

Hospital malpractice cases require enormous resources including expert witnesses in multiple specialties (nursing, hospital administration, infection control, patient safety), extensive medical record review, sometimes hiring investigators to interview staff, and prolonged litigation against hospitals with experienced defense counsel. We advance all costs on a contingency fee basis, so you never pay attorney fees or case expenses unless we recover compensation for you. This allows you to pursue justice against powerful hospital systems without financial stress while you focus on recovery.

Expert Resources to Prove Institutional Negligence

Winning a hospital malpractice case requires proving the hospital's policies, procedures, staffing, or systems fell below industry standards and caused your harm. We work with nurse experts who explain appropriate nurse-to-patient ratios and what proper nursing care entails, hospital administrators who testify about credentialing requirements and supervision standards, infection control specialists who identify violations of sterile technique or isolation protocols, patient safety experts who explain how safety checklists and protocols should work, and medical economists who calculate the cost of treating complications you wouldn't have suffered with proper hospital care. These experts review the hospital's policies, compare them to national standards, and identify exactly where institutional failures occurred.

Maximum Compensation for Medical Complications and Extended Suffering

Hospital negligence often causes complications that extend your hospital stay, require additional surgeries, or create new medical conditions you didn't have before. A hospital-acquired infection can lead to sepsis requiring ICU care and months of recovery. A medication error can cause organ damage requiring transplant. A fall can cause fractures and head injuries requiring rehabilitation. We document every harm caused by the hospital's negligence, the additional medical expenses, prolonged disability, extended time away from work, increased pain and suffering, and worsened long-term prognosis. We don't let hospitals escape responsibility for the cascade of problems their negligence created. Our settlements and verdicts account for the full scope of harm, including future medical needs if you suffer permanent complications from hospital errors.

Common Questions About Hospital Malpractice in New York City

What types of hospital errors qualify as malpractice in New York?

Hospital malpractice occurs when the hospital's institutional failures, policies, or systems cause patient harm. Common forms include corporate negligence for failing to properly credential, supervise, or discipline staff, inadequate staffing leading to delayed response to emergencies or medication errors, failure to follow infection control protocols causing hospital-acquired infections like MRSA, C. diff, or surgical site infections, medication errors from pharmacy mistakes or nurse administration failures, patient falls from inadequate supervision or unsafe conditions, equipment failures from poor maintenance, wrong-site surgeries from failure to enforce surgical safety checklists, emergency room negligence from overcrowding and inadequate triage, premature discharge or patient dumping for financial reasons, and failure to have proper policies for high-risk situations like sepsis protocols or rapid response teams. The key is proving the hospital itself, not just an individual doctor, failed to meet standards that a reasonably safe hospital would follow.

How is hospital negligence different from doctor malpractice?

Doctor malpractice involves an individual physician's treatment decisions, a surgeon who makes a technical error, an internist who misdiagnoses your condition, or an obstetrician who doesn't recognize fetal distress. Hospital negligence involves the institution's failures, inadequate staffing levels that prevent nurses from properly monitoring patients, failure to credential a doctor with a history of malpractice, lack of policies to prevent medication errors, unsanitary conditions that cause infections, or equipment that's broken or improperly maintained. Often both exist in the same case: a doctor makes an error (doctor malpractice) and the hospital failed to supervise or stop that doctor (hospital negligence). When we sue hospitals, we're holding the institution accountable for its corporate responsibilities separate from individual provider errors. This distinction matters because hospitals often have deeper pockets and higher insurance limits than individual doctors.

What is the statute of limitations for hospital malpractice cases in New York?

You have 2.5 years from the date of the hospital negligence to file a lawsuit in most cases. For public hospitals operated by NYC Health + Hospitals (like Bellevue, Elmhurst, Jacobi, Kings County, or Coney Island Hospital), you must file a Notice of Claim within 90 days of the incident and file suit within 1 year and 90 days. These shorter deadlines for public hospitals are strictly enforced and missing them almost always destroys your case against the hospital, though you may still be able to sue individual doctors. The statute can be complex if your injury developed over time, for example, if you contracted an infection during hospitalization but didn't become seriously ill until weeks later. Because these deadlines are strict and evidence disappears quickly (hospitals correct charts, staff leaves, and institutional memory fades), contact a hospital malpractice lawyer immediately after discovering negligence.

Can I sue a hospital for infections I got during my stay?

Yes, if the infection resulted from the hospital's failure to follow proper infection control protocols. Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) like MRSA, C. difficile, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, ventilator-associated pneumonia, and surgical site infections are often preventable with proper hand hygiene, sterile technique, equipment sterilization, and isolation procedures. If you entered the hospital without an infection and developed one during your stay, this raises serious questions about the hospital's infection control practices. We investigate whether the hospital had adequate policies, whether staff followed those policies, whether the hospital was cited by health inspectors for infection control violations, and whether your infection was part of a pattern suggesting systemic problems. Not every hospital-acquired infection is malpractice, some occur despite perfect care, but if the hospital cut corners on sterilization, failed to enforce hand-washing protocols, or used unsterile equipment, they can be held liable for resulting infections.

Who can be held liable when hospital negligence causes harm?

Multiple parties may be liable in hospital malpractice cases. The hospital itself can be held directly liable for corporate negligence, failure to maintain safe facilities, inadequate credentialing of staff, insufficient nursing levels, poor supervision of residents, failure to enforce safety protocols, or retaining doctors with known competency problems. Individual nurses, technicians, pharmacists, or other hospital employees whose errors harmed you can be liable, and the hospital is often vicariously liable for their negligence under respondeat superior (employer liability). Attending physicians can be held responsible if they failed to properly supervise residents or other doctors. Equipment manufacturers may be liable if defective medical devices contributed to your injury. In teaching hospitals, both the resident who made the error and the attending physician who failed to supervise can be sued. We pursue all potentially liable parties to maximize your recovery.

What damages can I recover in a hospital malpractice case?

You can recover economic damages for all additional medical expenses caused by hospital negligence, emergency treatment for infections or complications, additional surgeries to repair damage, extended hospital stays, rehabilitation, home health care, medications, and future medical care for permanent injuries or chronic conditions resulting from hospital errors. You're entitled to compensation for lost wages during extended recovery and loss of earning capacity if complications prevent you from working. Non-economic damages compensate for pain and suffering from the additional injuries or illness caused by hospital negligence, emotional distress and trauma, loss of quality of life, disability and disfigurement, and loss of consortium (impact on family relationships). In wrongful death cases, your family can recover funeral expenses, loss of financial support, loss of companionship, and compensation for your loved one's pain before death. Hospital malpractice settlements and verdicts can reach into the millions when institutional failures cause catastrophic injuries, permanent disabilities, or death.

How do I prove the hospital was negligent?

Proving hospital negligence requires showing the hospital's systems, policies, staffing, or procedures fell below accepted standards and caused your harm. We start by obtaining all hospital records including your medical chart, nursing notes with staffing levels and patient-to-nurse ratios, medication administration records, incident reports filed by staff, quality assurance reviews, internal communications about your case, the hospital's written policies and procedures, and inspection reports from the Department of Health or Joint Commission. Our experts compare the hospital's actual practices to industry standards, for example, what nurse-to-patient ratios should have been for your level of acuity, what infection control protocols should have been followed for your procedure, or what credentialing checks should have been performed on your doctor. We depose hospital administrators, nurse managers, and staff to establish what happened and whether it met standards. We also look for patterns, if multiple patients suffered similar harm, it suggests systemic problems rather than isolated incidents.

What if the hospital blames my doctor instead of their staff or policies?

Hospitals routinely try to deflect blame to individual doctors, claiming "we just provide the facility, the doctors are independent contractors." This defense often fails because hospitals have legal duties that go beyond just renting space. Hospitals must properly credential doctors before granting privileges, supervise residents and less experienced physicians, have nurses and staff who can competently assist in procedures, maintain safe equipment and facilities, and have policies to prevent foreseeable harm. Even if your doctor was the primary negligent party, the hospital may be liable for failing to supervise that doctor, allowing them to practice despite known competency problems, not having proper safeguards to catch the doctor's errors, or not providing adequate support staff or resources. In many cases, both the doctor and hospital share responsibility, the doctor made a medical error AND the hospital created conditions that allowed it to happen or failed to catch it through proper supervision and safety systems.

Areas We Serve

Michael Gunzburg, P.C. represents hospital malpractice victims throughout New York City, including all five boroughs. We handle cases in Manhattan (including Greenwich Village, the Upper East Side near major medical centers like NYU Langone and NewYork-Presbyterian, and other neighborhoods), Brooklyn (including Park Slope, Downtown Brooklyn, and areas near SUNY Downstate, Maimonides, and Brooklyn Hospital), Queens (including Astoria, Flushing, and neighborhoods near Elmhurst Hospital, Jamaica Hospital, and New York-Presbyterian Queens), the Bronx (including Riverdale, Fordham, and areas near Montefiore Medical Center and Jacobi Medical Center), and Staten Island. We also represent clients treated at NYC Health + Hospitals facilities and throughout New York State.

Other Medical Malpractice Services We Offer

• Birth Injuries and Cerebral Palsy
• Surgical Mistakes
• Anesthesia Errors
• Failure to Diagnose Cancer (Breast, Vulvar, Other Cancers)
• Gynecology Malpractice
• Misdiagnosis and Delayed Diagnosis
• Medical Malpractice Lawyer

Schedule Your Free Consultation with a New York City Hospital Malpractice Lawyer

If you or a loved one suffered harm from hospital negligence, you deserve answers and accountability. Hospitals have powerful legal teams and insurance companies working to minimize their liability from day one. You need an experienced advocate who understands how hospitals operate and how to prove institutional failures caused your injuries. Michael Gunzburg, P.C. offers a free, no-obligation consultation to evaluate your case, explain your legal options, and answer your questions. You pay nothing unless we recover compensation for you. Call 212-725-8500 today or contact us online. Let us hold negligent hospitals accountable and fight for the compensation you deserve.