The Clinical Checklist for Medical Malpractice Cases Before You Retain Anyone

Here is the clinical checklist that should be run on every potential medical malpractice case before expert retention is considered.

Standard of Care

Is there a documented complaint, finding, or clinical picture that required a specific response under the applicable standard, and did that response happen? Not was the outcome bad. Was the care wrong given what was known at the time.

Documentation Gaps

What is absent from the chart that should be there? Unsigned orders. Missing reassessment notes. No documentation of informed consent for a specific risk. Nursing findings not addressed in the physician note. These gaps are often where the case lives.

Timing

What was the window between the deviation and the point of no return? Causation arguments require a tight, medically coherent timeline. If the harm would have occurred regardless of intervention timing, causation is a problem.

Causation

Does the deviation connect directly to the injury? Not every negligent act causes compensable harm. The two analyses are separate and both have to hold.

Documentation Integrity

Were notes signed in real time or hours later? Were there amendments? Does the electronic record audit trail match the narrative in the chart?

Expert Scope

What specialty, what specific opinion, and whether one expert covers the case or whether you need a standard of care expert and a separate causation expert.

What This Checklist Requires

If you cannot answer all six of these before you retain, you are not ready to retain. That is what a pre-litigation independent merit screening gives you: all six, in writing, in five business days, from a physician and a licensed legal nurse consultant who read the entire chart.

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