You went in for one thing. You came out with something else, an infection that cost you weeks and required another surgery. Now you want to know whether anyone can be held accountable.
The honest answer starts with an uncomfortable fact. Even a well-run hospital can cause infections, some from bacteria a previous patient carried in.
So, the infection by itself proves nothing, and that’s the first thing a defense attorney will say. It’s also the first thing a good Philadelphia medical malpractice lawyer will tell you.
But that doesn’t always end it. Here’s what counts as a hospital-acquired infection, when one can be linked to malpractice, what evidence decides it, and what a claim might be worth.
The Infection Alone Doesn’t Make a Case
Hospital-acquired infections, which the medical field calls healthcare-associated infections, are infections a patient picks up while being treated for an unrelated ailment.
They are common. According to the CDC’s most recent survey, about one in 38 hospitalized patients had at least one on any given day in 2023. That works out to roughly 518,000 infections in American hospitals that year alone. And that’s a number that’s been improving, from one in 31 in 2015.
The types that turn up most often are pneumonia, surgical site infections, and gastrointestinal infections. MRSA and C. diff get the bigger headlines, and they are serious, but they are not the whole picture. One finding is worth sitting with.
Nearly two-thirds of these infections had nothing to do with a device or procedure, which means the catheter and the ventilator are not even the biggest risks.
None of that can justify a lawsuit. Bacteria are everywhere, surgery breaks the skin, and sick people have weaker immune systems. This means preventable infections are a subset of the total. Getting to that subset is where you’ll find a potential lawsuit.
The Case Is Usually About What Happened Next
A malpractice claim needs four factors:
- A provider owed you a duty of care
- They breached the duty
- The breach caused your injury
- The injury cost you something
Duty is rarely disputed once you have been admitted, and damages are usually obvious. The legal fight is over the middle two factors: breach and cause.
A standard of care breach means a provider did something a reasonably careful one in the same situation would not have done or skipped a step they shouldn’t have. Contaminated instruments and skipped hand hygiene are the more common examples, and they do happen.
However, most of these cases come from somebody missing the infection. Vital signs drift the wrong way across a shift, and nobody takes appropriate action. A surgical wound turns red and hot and gets noted but not cultured. Sepsis develops on a fragile timeline where every hour matters and key protocols get missed.
The germ itself might have been unavoidable. It’s what happened in the four hours after initial infection that creates a potential case.
Your Chart Is the Witness
These cases get proven in the paperwork. The hospital documented everything it did, when, and by whom, and it created that record almost automatically, before anyone considered a lawsuit.
Here is the kind of documentation that carries the most weight:
- Medical records showing vital signs, nursing notes, and when symptoms first appeared
- Lab and culture results, including when they were ordered against when they came back
- Operative and sterilization records for the equipment used
- Infection control logs and the facility’s own written protocols
- Staffing records for the shifts in question
There is also one Pennsylvania requirement that catches some people off guard.
To keep a malpractice case alive here, your attorney must file a Certificate of Merit within 60 days of the complaint, stating that a licensed professional has reviewed the matter and found a reasonable probability the care fell outside of accepted standards.
In plain terms, a doctor has to read your chart and agree with you before your case goes anywhere. Arranging this evaluation takes time, which is why the two-year filing deadline can feel a lot tighter than that.
What an Infection Actually Costs You
Medical negligence damages in an infection case cover what the infection added to your life, not what the original condition was going to cost you anyway. That means the treatment you needed because of the infection is key. Was it a second surgery? Weeks of IV antibiotics? A longer stay followed by rehab?
Compensation also covers wages lost during time you were never supposed to miss.
There’s also the pain you experienced, any permanent damage left by the infection, and what all that damage will cost you going forward. This could include amputation, organ failure, and chronic pain, which all carry decades of expenses with them.
Separating what the infection cost from what the illness cost is hard work, but it is often where these cases are won or lost.
Ask the Better Question
Getting an infection in a hospital is not proof that anyone failed you. But it is a reason to find out. The difference between an unavoidable complication and a preventable one is somewhere inside paperwork that the hospital would rather you didn’t see.
Shrager, Sachs, & Blanco is a Philadelphia trial firm. Medical malpractice is the center of what our attorneys do. It includes claims for hospital-acquired infections and pressure injuries. We know what an infection record is supposed to look like, and we know how to find the hours where it stops making sense. We build these files for trial from the start, because that is what changes how a hospital reacts to claims.
If your recovery took a turn nobody warned you about, speak with an attorney about pulling the records. The answer you need is in there somewhere.
