6 Common Types of Medical Malpractice in Florida

Gregg Hollander | September 8, 2026 | Medical Malpractice

A missed infection can progress to septic shock. A patient with a stroke can lose access to time-sensitive treatment. An abnormal scan can sit without follow-up until the underlying disease becomes far more difficult to treat. Understanding the types of medical malpractice can help determine whether a serious outcome resulted from an unavoidable medical problem or from care that fell below accepted standards.

Hollander Law Firm handles serious medical malpractice cases involving permanent injury and wrongful death throughout Florida. Gregg Hollander has more than 30 years of legal experience. We review each matter carefully, allowing us to focus our resources on cases where careful medical and legal analysis can make a meaningful difference.

The examples of medical negligence below show where these cases often begin. Whether a viable claim exists depends on what the provider knew, what appropriate care was required at that point, and whether different treatment probably would have changed the patient’s outcome.

Contact our firm online or call (561) 347-7770 today for a free consultation and to learn how our Florida medical malpractice attorney can help.

What Is Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice occurs when a healthcare provider departs from the prevailing professional standard of care, and that departure causes injury or death.

Under Florida law, the standard of care is based on the level of care, skill, and treatment that reasonably prudent similar healthcare providers would consider acceptable and appropriate under the surrounding circumstances.

A viable claim generally requires evidence establishing the:

• Provider owed the patient a professional duty of care;
• Provider breached the applicable standard of care;
• Breach caused the patient’s injury; and
• Patient suffered legally compensable damages.

A medical injury by itself does not create a presumption that the provider was negligent. You must prove the above elements.

What Are the Most Common Medical Malpractice Claims?

The most common types of medical malpractice involve errors in diagnosis, treatment, surgery, medication, and medical imaging. These mistakes can support a claim when they cause a serious injury or death that proper medical care likely would have prevented.

Misdiagnosis

Misdiagnosis occurs when a provider identifies the wrong condition and treats the patient based on that incorrect diagnosis. The legal analysis focuses on whether the information reasonably available at the time should have led a competent provider to consider and investigate the correct diagnosis.

The following dangerous infections illustrate how that can happen.

Sepsis and septic shock

Sepsis is the body’s extreme response to infection and can progress to organ failure, shock, and death. 

Warning signs may include:

• Fever,
• Elevated heart rate,
• Low blood pressure,
• Altered mental status,
• Breathing problems, and
• Evidence of infection or organ damage.

Malpractice may occur when these findings are attributed to a less serious condition without appropriate testing or treatment. The key issue is often whether earlier recognition, antibiotics, and supportive care would have prevented septic shock or permanent injury.

Bacterial endocarditis

Bacterial endocarditis is an infection of the heart’s inner lining, often involving a heart valve. Diagnosis commonly relies on symptoms, blood cultures, and echocardiography.

A misdiagnosis may involve persistent fever or bacteremia that is attributed to another condition, abnormal blood cultures that are not properly investigated, or failure to evaluate a high-risk patient. Delayed treatment can lead to valve damage, heart failure, stroke, or other organ injury.

Necrotizing fasciitis

Necrotizing fasciitis is a rapidly spreading infection that can initially resemble cellulitis or another routine skin infection. Severe pain disproportionate to visible skin changes can be an important warning sign.

In Florida, Vibrio vulnificus is an added concern because it occurs naturally in warm brackish and saltwater. Malpractice may occur when a worsening wound is treated as a minor infection despite severe pain, swelling, systemic illness, or relevant water exposure. Delayed treatment can lead to extensive tissue loss, amputation, septic shock, or death.

Delayed Diagnosis

A delayed diagnosis occurs when a provider identifies the correct condition only after a preventable delay. 

The problem may begin when a doctor:

• Overlooks warning signs,
• Fails to order appropriate testing,
• Does not follow up on abnormal results, or
• Continues treating a less serious diagnosis even as the patient’s condition worsens.

A delay becomes malpractice when a reasonably careful provider should have made the diagnosis sooner, and earlier treatment would probably have prevented serious harm.

A heart attack is one example. A provider may delay the diagnosis by dismissing chest pain or other cardiac symptoms, failing to order or repeat an ECG or cardiac blood tests, or failing to act on abnormal findings. During that delay, additional heart muscle can be permanently damaged, increasing the risk of heart failure, dangerous arrhythmias, cardiogenic shock, or death. The claim then depends on whether timely diagnosis and treatment probably would have produced a better outcome.

Failure to Diagnose

Failure to diagnose occurs when a provider does not identify a medical condition despite symptoms, test results, or other findings that should have prompted further investigation. This may happen when a doctor dismisses warning signs, fails to order appropriate tests, or does not consider a serious condition in the differential diagnosis.

Stroke is one example because treatment can depend on rapid recognition. A patient may present with weakness, facial drooping, speech or vision changes, confusion, or imbalance, yet receive another diagnosis. If the stroke is not recognized until time-sensitive treatments are no longer available, the key issue is whether earlier diagnosis and treatment probably would have reduced the resulting neurological damage.

Surgical Errors

Surgical malpractice can arise from negligent technique, injury to surrounding structures, inadequate planning, failure to control bleeding, or failure to recognize and treat a postoperative complication.

A complication alone does not prove malpractice. Operative reports, postoperative imaging, anatomy, the patient’s condition before surgery, and the response to later symptoms may be necessary to determine whether the injury resulted from accepted surgical risk or substandard care.

Certain errors receive different treatment under Florida law. The discovery of a foreign object commonly used during surgery, such as a sponge, clamp, forceps, or surgical needle, is prima facie evidence of negligence. Wrong-patient surgery, wrong-site surgery, wrong procedures, and retained foreign objects may also qualify as serious reportable adverse incidents, sometimes referred to as “never events.”

Medication Errors

Medication malpractice can occur during prescribing, dispensing, administration, or monitoring.

Potential errors include:

• Giving the wrong drug or dose,
• Failing to account for a documented allergy,
• Prescribing medications with dangerous interactions,
• Administering medication to the wrong patient, or
• Failing to adjust or monitor a drug when the patient’s kidney function, bleeding risk, or other clinical factors require adjustment or monitoring.

Responsibility may require tracing the order through the entire medication process. The prescribing physician, pharmacist, nurse, and hospital medication system can have different roles.

In a serious injury case, medication administration records, physician orders, pharmacy records, laboratory values, allergy documentation, and electronic timestamps can help show where the breakdown occurred and how it caused the injury.

Radiology Errors

Radiology malpractice can involve missing an abnormality, misinterpreting a study, failing to compare prior imaging, or failing to communicate an urgent finding.

Examples can include overlooking serious injuries, including:

• A brain bleed,
• Pulmonary embolism,
• Tumor,
• Fracture,
• Vascular emergency, or
• Another finding visible on the images.

A different problem arises when the radiologist correctly identifies the abnormality, but the information never reaches the treating provider who needs to act on it.

For that reason, Hollander Law Firm may examine the original images along with the radiology report, prior comparison studies, ordering-provider records, communication logs, and subsequent imaging. The timeline can reveal whether the problem was interpretation, communication, follow-up, or several failures occurring together.

How Do I Prove Medical Malpractice?

Proving medical malpractice requires building a medical timeline that shows what the provider knew, what should have happened instead, and how the error changed the patient’s outcome. 

The most difficult part is often causation. Even when the medical records support negligence, the defense may argue that the patient’s underlying condition would have caused the same injury or death despite proper treatment.

Consider a patient whose sepsis was diagnosed hours too late. The case must establish more than that the diagnosis should have occurred sooner. Medical evidence must show that earlier recognition and treatment probably would have prevented the permanent organ damage, amputation, brain injury, or death.

The defense may argue that the underlying infection was already too advanced for earlier treatment to change the outcome.

At Hollander Law Firm, we will use evidence to establish what happened and when. 

This may include:

• Medical records documenting symptoms, examinations, and clinical decisions;
• Laboratory results and trends showing how the patient’s condition changed;
• ECGs, diagnostic imaging, pathology materials, and other test results;
• Medication, surgical, anesthesia, and nursing records;
• Electronic timestamps showing when tests were ordered, results became available, and providers responded; and
• Testimony from qualified medical professionals explaining the appropriate standard of care and how the negligence affected the outcome.

The strength of the case often depends on whether the medical evidence tells a clear sequence: what warning signs were present, what the provider should have done, when treatment should have occurred, and what harm followed because it did not.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Long Do I Have to Bring a Medical Malpractice Claim in Florida?

Florida generally requires a medical malpractice action to be brought within two years of the incident or within two years of when the incident was discovered, or reasonably should have been discovered.

Florida also generally imposes a four-year statute of repose. This creates an outside deadline measured from the date of the medical incident. In most cases, a claim cannot be brought more than four years after the malpractice occurred, even if the patient did not discover it until after that period expired.

If you fail to file by this deadline, you generally lose your right to recover, despite the strength of the evidence.

How Much Compensation Can I Recover for My Medical Malpractice Claim?

There is no standard value for a Florida medical malpractice claim. Compensation depends on the circumstances of each case. 

Factors that can affect compensation include the following:

• Seriousness of the harm,
• Permanence of the injuries,
• Strength of the evidence,
• Effect on the ability to work, and
• A change in the injured individual’s ability to be independent.

Recoverable damages may include past and future medical expenses, lost income, reduced earning capacity, pain and suffering, mental anguish, physical impairment, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life.

What Happens Before a Florida Medical Malpractice Lawsuit Can Be Filed?

Florida requires a pre-suit investigation before most medical negligence lawsuits can begin.

The claimant must investigate whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that a healthcare provider was negligent and that the negligence caused injury. A verified medical opinion from a qualified medical professional generally must corroborate those grounds when the notice of intent is sent.

After notice is served, the prospective defendant generally has 90 days to investigate the claim. During that time, a lawsuit ordinarily cannot be filed. The defendant or insurer may reject the claim, make a settlement offer, or offer arbitration.

This process makes early case evaluation valuable. The medical theory, responsible providers, expert qualifications, and causal connection should be examined before the claim reaches formal litigation.

Can a Hospital Be Responsible for Medical Malpractice?

Yes. A Florida hospital can potentially be liable when its own failures contribute to a patient’s injury. Florida law requires hospitals and other healthcare facilities to use reasonable care in areas such as selecting and reviewing medical staff, maintaining risk-management procedures, and supervising those processes.

Hospital liability may arise when poor credentialing, inadequate supervision, communication failures, or breakdowns in hospital procedures contribute to serious harm. In a complex malpractice case, identifying who was responsible may require reviewing the conduct of individual physicians and nurses, as well as the hospital systems that affected the patient’s care.

Contact Hollander Law Firm and Let Us Review What Happened

The most common medical malpractice claims can become difficult for the same reason: the medical record must establish where appropriate care should have changed course and what that change probably would have prevented.

Hollander Law Firm has recovered millions of dollars for injured clients. Gregg Hollander and our team examine the clinical timeline, the decisions made at critical points in the patient’s care, the medical evidence supporting causation, and the long-term consequences of the injury.

If negligent medical care may have caused permanent injury or the death of someone you love, contact Hollander Law Firm online or call (561) 347-7770 today for a free consultation. We can review the circumstances and determine whether the medical evidence supports a Florida malpractice claim.

Legal References Used to Inform This Page

To ensure the accuracy and clarity of this page, we referenced official legal and other resources during the content development process:

• Limitations other than for the recovery of real property, Fla. Stat. § 95.11 (2025).
• Presuit investigation of medical negligence claims and defenses by prospective parties, Fla. Stat. § 766.203 (2025).
• Notice before filing action for medical negligence, Fla. Stat. § 766.106 (2025).
• Liability of health care facilities, Fla. Stat. § 766.110 (2025).
• Medical negligence; standards of recovery, Fla. Stat. § 766.102 (2025).