What To Do If You Have a Medical Malpractice Case

You went in for care and came out worse: a diagnosis that came too late, a surgery that went wrong, a medication that made you sicker, or a loved one who didn’t come home. If you’re replaying every appointment and wondering whether you’re just looking for someone to blame, that’s normal.

Here’s the plain answer. You may have a medical malpractice case if a doctor, nurse, hospital or other provider gave care that fell below what a reasonably careful provider would have given, and that caused you real harm. A bad outcome alone isn’t enough, and you’ll usually need a qualified medical expert to say the care fell short. Take the self-check below, then get your records, a second opinion and a timeline, find your deadline, and hold off on talking to the provider’s insurer.

The hard part is that the evidence starts out on the other side: the provider has the chart, and its insurer handles claims like yours every day. Michigan’s rules are in the boxes marked “In Michigan” and in the Michigan section.

Hurt and not sure where you stand? Get a free case review. Four quick questions, no cost, no obligation.

Harm during medical care is common, but much of it happens even when the care is right. When the Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reviewed the records of a random sample of 770 Medicare patients discharged from hospitals in October 2018, 25% had experienced harm during their stays. Physician reviewers judged 43% of the harm events preventable, with preventable events commonly linked to substandard or inadequate care, and 56% not preventable: those happened even though providers followed proper procedures. For the full picture, see our complete guide to medical malpractice.

Do you have a medical malpractice case? A five-question self-check

Malpractice is professional negligence: a professional’s failure to follow “generally accepted professional standards,” which still has to cause harm, like any negligence claim (Legal Information Institute). A doctor is measured against a reasonable doctor, not against perfection. Answer these five questions:

How to read your answers:

• Yes or “maybe” to all five: get your records and a case review soon.
• Not sure about 2 or 3: that’s what an expert’s review of your records answers, and a case review is how it starts.
• No to 4: even a real mistake may not support a claim if it caused little lasting harm (see why lawyers turn down smaller cases, below).
• Not sure about 5: ask now, and don’t count on exceptions.

Is a bad outcome the same as malpractice?

No. Medicine carries risks even when everything is done right, and a complication you were warned about can happen with good care. What makes it malpractice is a mistake a careful provider wouldn’t have made, and harm that the mistake caused.

Claims without a mistake usually fail. When physicians reviewed a random sample of 1,452 closed malpractice claims from five insurers, they found that 37% didn’t involve an error, and 72% of those weren’t paid. By contrast, 73% of the claims for injuries caused by an error were paid (New England Journal of Medicine, 2006).

Which situations are red flags?

None of these proves malpractice, but each is a good reason to have your records reviewed:

• Something that should never happen, such as surgery on the wrong body part or patient, or a sponge left inside after surgery. These are on the National Quality Forum’s list of “never events,” which the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) describes as serious and usually preventable. See what to do after a surgical error.
• A warning sign nobody acted on, such as an abnormal test result that was never followed up or passed on to you; serious harm from that is on the same list. Symptoms that were brushed off until a condition was harder to treat are a red flag too. See how misdiagnosis claims work.
• A medication mistake: the wrong drug or dose, or a drug your chart says you’re allergic to. See how medication error claims work.
• A delivery that went wrong, such as signs of trouble during labor that weren’t acted on in time. The death or serious injury of a mother or baby during labor or delivery in a low-risk pregnancy is on the list. See how birth injury claims work.
• A new injury unrelated to why you were there, such as a fall or a burn that caused serious injury, or a stage 3 or 4 pressure sore that developed after admission. All three are on the list.
• A risk nobody mentioned. Before most treatment, you generally must give informed consent, knowing the risks and the alternatives (Legal Information Institute).
• An admission, or a new doctor saying the problem should have been caught sooner.

Usually not enough on its own:

• a complication you were warned about that was recognized and treated promptly
• a treatment that didn’t work, or an illness that got worse despite reasonable care
• a rude or dismissive provider, a long wait or a billing dispute, with no physical harm
• a mistake that was caught before it hurt you

What should you do right now?

You don’t have to decide today whether to bring a claim, but a few steps can’t wait.

Get the care you need, and a second opinion

Your health comes first. If you’ve lost trust in a provider, ask for a referral or a transfer, and see another doctor, ideally outside the practice or hospital involved, about where things stand and what comes next. A new doctor may not want to comment on someone else’s care, and that’s fine: judging the earlier care is a job for an expert who reviews the records for a claim.

Request your complete medical records

Ask each provider involved, in writing, for your complete records, including charts, test results, imaging, medication records and bills. Federal law generally gives you the right to a copy of your medical and billing records. A provider must act within 30 days, or within 60 if it explains the delay in writing within the first 30, and can charge only a reasonable, cost-based fee (45 CFR 164.501, 164.524). Keep a copy of every request.

Write a timeline while it’s fresh

List every visit, test, call and prescription, with dates, names and what you were told, plus your symptoms and what the injury has cost you so far. Note when and how you first suspected something had gone wrong; in Michigan, that date can matter under the six-month discovery rule (MCL 600.5838a(2)).

Be careful with the provider’s insurer

A hospital risk manager or the provider’s insurance company may contact you. You don’t have to give a recorded statement, and it’s safer not to before you’ve had advice. AHRQ publishes a toolkit to help hospitals disclose what happened early and work toward a resolution, which might include compensation. But if an offer comes with a release, signing it generally gives up your right to sue (Legal Information Institute). Get advice before you sign anything, including paperwork that comes with a bill write-off.

Not sure whether what happened was malpractice? Get a free case review. Four quick questions, no cost, no obligation.

How long do you have, and what does Michigan require?

Every state sets its own deadline and steps. California, for example, allows three years from the injury or one year from when you discovered it, or should have, whichever comes first (Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 340.5); see every state’s injury deadline and its exceptions. Care from a VA health care employee, or from a federally funded community health center “deemed” a Public Health Service employee, is different: the claim is generally against the United States and starts with a written claim to the agency within two years (38 U.S.C. § 7316(a); 42 U.S.C. § 233(a), (g); 28 U.S.C. §§ 2401(b), 2675(a)).

Here are Michigan’s rules, as of September 2026:

To use the six-month rule, you must prove you didn’t discover the claim, and shouldn’t have, until the last six months before the two-year deadline or later (MCL 600.5838a(2)).

What has to happen before you sue?

1. An expert review. The notice, and the expert’s affidavit filed with the lawsuit, must both state the standard of care and how it was breached, so in practice an expert reviews your records first (MCL 600.2912b(4), 600.2912d(1)).
2. A notice of intent, mailed to each provider at least 182 days before you sue, stating the facts, the standard of care, how it was breached, what should have been done, how that caused the injury, and everyone you’re notifying (MCL 600.2912b(1), (2), (4)).
3. The provider’s written response, due within 154 days after it receives the notice. If none arrives, you can sue when the 154 days end; if the provider says in writing that it won’t settle, you can sue sooner, as long as your deadline hasn’t passed (MCL 600.2912b(7)-(9)).
4. The lawsuit, filed with an affidavit of merit from a health professional your lawyer reasonably believes qualifies as an expert. Against a specialist, the expert must practice the same specialty (and be board certified in it if the specialist is) and, in the year before the malpractice, must have spent most of their professional time practicing or teaching in that field (MCL 600.2912d(1), 600.2169(1)).

The notice can pause your deadline. If the deadline would run out during the notice period, a notice sent in time pauses the clock for up to the number of days left in that period, so it must go out before the deadline passes (MCL 600.5856(c)). On July 29, 2026, in Ernest v Brown, the Michigan Supreme Court held that a notice also pauses the extra time an estate gets after a death, overruling Waltz v Wyse (2004).

What is Michigan’s 2026 damage cap?

Michigan caps noneconomic damages in malpractice cases, such as pain, suffering, physical impairment, disfigurement and loss of companionship, and the State Treasurer adjusts the cap for inflation every year (MCL 600.1483(3), (4)). For 2026, the Michigan Department of Treasury set it at $596,400, or $1,065,000 if the negligence caused paralysis from a brain or spinal cord injury, permanently impaired cognitive capacity, or permanent loss of the ability to have children, as the statute defines them (MCL 600.1483(1); notice of January 30, 2026). One cap covers every plaintiff against every defendant, and it doesn’t limit economic damages, such as medical bills and lost income. Ask a lawyer which year’s figure applies to your case. For each step in detail, see Michigan medical malpractice law.

Why do many lawyers turn down smaller malpractice cases?

Being turned down isn’t a finding that nothing went wrong. Injury lawyers often work on a contingency fee, meaning the fee depends on winning or settling the case (MCR 8.121(A)), and malpractice cases are slow and expensive to prove:

• Experts are required and paid either way. A Michigan complaint must be filed with a qualified expert’s affidavit of merit, and an expert can’t testify on a contingency basis (MCL 600.2912d(1), 600.2169(4)).
• It takes years. The notice period alone is usually 182 days (MCL 600.2912b(1)). In a U.S. Justice Department study of malpractice insurance claims closed from 2000 to 2004, paid claims in Florida, Missouri and Texas took an average of nearly four years from the injury to close (Bureau of Justice Statistics).
• Much of the money goes to the fight. In the 1,452-claim study, for every dollar of compensation, 54 cents went to administrative costs, including lawyers, experts and courts (New England Journal of Medicine, 2006).
• Payments track the injury. In the Justice Department study, Florida’s median payment on claims closed from 2000 to 2004 was $50,000 for temporary injuries and $210,000 for permanent ones, in 2004 dollars.
• Recoveries have limits. Michigan caps noneconomic damages, and a contingency fee can’t be more than one-third of the recovery after case costs are deducted (MCL 600.1483; MCR 8.121(B), (C)). See how injury lawyers get paid.

So a clear mistake that caused a modest, temporary injury can cost more to prove than it could recover, and a lawyer may decline it even though you were wronged. In Missouri, temporary injuries fell from about half of paid malpractice claims in 1990 to about a third in 2004; the Bureau of Justice Statistics said rising litigation costs and changes in how plaintiffs’ lawyers decide which claims to litigate may explain the shift.

If a lawyer says no, ask why: weak evidence, a low value, a conflict of interest and a deadline problem are different answers. Ask what your deadline is, and get another opinion quickly, because talking to lawyers doesn’t pause it; in Michigan, a properly sent notice of intent can (MCL 600.5856(c)). See why a lawyer may turn down a case.

What to do next

1. Get the care you need, and a second opinion on where things stand.
2. Request your complete records in writing from every provider involved, and keep copies.
3. Write your timeline, including when you first suspected something went wrong.
4. Hold off on statements and signatures. Don’t give the provider’s insurer a recorded statement or sign anything before you’ve had advice.
5. Get a free case review. A lawyer can have your records reviewed and pin down your deadline. Get a free case review, or, if you were treated in Michigan, compare Michigan injury lawyers.

What waiting can cost

• The claim itself. In Michigan, a malpractice action that isn’t filed in time “is barred” (MCL 600.5838a(2)), and the notice of intent, due at least 182 days before you sue, pauses the deadline only if it goes out before the deadline passes (MCL 600.2912b(1), 600.5856(c)).
• Your records and memory. A records request alone can take up to 60 days (45 CFR 164.524(b)(2)), and details fade.
• A family’s extra time. After a death, the estate’s extra time runs from the letters of authority and has an outer limit (MCL 600.5852), so open the estate early.

What a good outcome looks like

Your records are in hand, and a qualified expert has told you whether the care fell short and whether that caused your injury. If it did, every notice went out on time, the lawsuit was filed with a sound affidavit of merit before the deadline, and your claim is valued on the evidence and your real losses. If it didn’t, you know why, and you can focus on getting well. From wondering whether you have a case to knowing what happened, what it would take to prove it and when your deadline falls.

For how malpractice claims work nationwide, see how medical malpractice lawsuits work, or browse all medical malpractice guides.

Updated September 27, 2026

This guide is general information, not legal advice, and laws change. For advice about your situation, talk to a lawyer licensed in your state. Reading this page or contacting us does not create an attorney-client relationship.