A bad outcome is not malpractice
Medicine carries risk, and treatment can fail without anyone having done anything wrong. A Pennsylvania malpractice claim requires something more specific: that the care fell below the standard of care — what a reasonably competent practitioner in the same field would have done in the same circumstances — and that the failure caused the harm.
Causation is usually the hardest part, because the patient was already unwell. The question is not whether the outcome was bad. It is whether it would have been meaningfully different with proper care.
You cannot start without an expert
Pennsylvania requires a certificate of merit in every professional liability case. Within 60 days of filing, the claim must be accompanied by a written statement from an appropriately licensed professional that there is a reasonable probability the care fell outside acceptable standards and caused the harm.
No certificate, and the case is dismissed regardless of its merits. This is why a malpractice claim cannot be worked up quickly, and why records have to be obtained and reviewed before anything is filed.
The MCARE Act also restricts who can serve as that expert: broadly, someone practising in the same subspecialty, board-certified where the defendant is, and actively engaged in clinical practice or teaching.
The deadline, and the discovery rule
Two years — but running from when you knew, or reasonably should have known, that you were injured and that the injury may have been caused by someone else’s conduct. In malpractice that is frequently later than the treatment itself.
For a child, the two years generally does not begin until their eighteenth birthday.
Wrongful death arising from malpractice runs two years from the date of death.
Pennsylvania previously imposed a seven-year outer limit regardless of discovery. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck that statute of repose down as unconstitutional in Yanakos in 2019, so an older injury discovered late is not automatically barred — but the discovery-rule analysis still has to be made carefully.
Where a case can be filed changed in 2023
For nearly twenty years medical malpractice cases had to be brought in the county where the treatment happened. That restriction was removed with effect from 1 January 2023, returning malpractice to the ordinary venue rules that apply to other civil claims.
This matters more than it sounds. Venue affects the jury pool, the timetable, and often the realistic value of a claim.
What these claims usually involve
- Failure or delay in diagnosis — cancer, cardiac events, infection, stroke. The commonest category by some distance.
- Surgical error, including wrong-site surgery and retained foreign objects
- Medication and anaesthesia errors
- Birth injury, which runs on its own timetable because of the minority rule
- Lack of informed consent — a distinct claim in Pennsylvania, about whether the risks and alternatives were properly explained before you agreed
What is recoverable
Past and future medical costs, lost earnings and lost earning capacity, and pain and suffering. Pennsylvania does not cap non-economic damages in malpractice. Punitive damages are available only for conduct going beyond ordinary negligence, and are limited by statute.
What to do first
Request your complete records, including imaging and nursing notes, in writing. Write down the sequence of events while you remember it. Do not sign anything a provider or their insurer puts in front of you before it has been read by someone acting for you.
LPB Law Group evaluates Pennsylvania medical malpractice claims at no charge and, given the expert requirements, will tell you plainly if a claim is not viable.