As the Parent of a Child who Suffered a Birth Injury, You may Wonder: What is the Average Settlement Amount? The Short Answer: There Isn’t One. Explore Why and What Matters for Determining Compensation.
When a birth injury occurs, the financial costs for temporary or permanent care can be overwhelming. If the injury results from a medical professional’s negligence, parents may pursue a claim for damages, including the medical and other care costs for the child’s health and well-being. When planning for your child’s care, you may be curious about the average birth injury settlement, but there is no such thing as an average settlement in these highly complex cases. Although birth injury settlements tend to be higher, each case is unique and requires a separate calculation and consideration. Also, settlements are typically confidential, so no central site reports medical malpractice settlement amounts. There are several key considerations that significantly affect the amount of compensation in a given birth injury case.
Top Considerations to Determine Birth Injury Settlement Amounts
A birth injury settlement is higher or lower depending on many factors, beginning with the injury itself.
#1: How Severely the Child was Injured
The nature and extent of the injury can largely determine a settlement amount. For example, for birth injuries that are less severe or temporary, meaning those that may heal on their own or with temporary treatment and therapy, the medical costs, past and future, are typically lower than more serious injuries. On the flip side, lifelong conditions due to negligence at delivery require far more treatment, therapy, medical devices, and home adaptation to accommodate a child with a condition such as cerebral palsy or hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE). They may have physical and mental damage that requires assistance with daily hygiene and care, learning, speaking, seeing, and hearing. They may likewise need pain and medical management for their lives.
#2: The Child’s Long-Term Prognosis
Another factor is the recovery. The length of time necessary for possible recovery, some recovery, or no possibility of recovery, has a massive impact on a settlement amount. The recovery length affects the compensation if there is such a possibility. The settlement for a child who will need medical and other assistance for three months is far lower than for a child needing care for three years, thirty years, or the remainder of their life. An infant may recover from fractures, sprains, blood loss, and slight jaundice in a period of months. For some children, the recovery may be longer, after surgery or surgeries, or reaching a certain age when therapies can help. Lifetime care requires the most financial assistance.
#3: The Cost of the Child’s Past, Present, and Future Needs
More severe birth injuries require more medical specialists, therapists, and services, which mean higher healthcare costs. A child with a severe birth injury may require periodic surgeries to relieve pressure from painful stiffness in muscles and joints, as is often the case with one of the main types of cerebral palsy. The follow-up care and physical therapy are additional costs, as are medications and other types of therapies for those with physical and cognitive deficits caused by damage during their birth.
A child with brain damage may have special educational needs, as well as needs for hearing aids, tutors, speech pathologists, and other specialists to help the child learn and grow. Healthcare costs for permanent injuries may continue for life. The child’s mental health needs are also compensable, so the extent of a child’s mental health needs, including counseling and medication, are compensable damages that factor into a settlement number. As expected, costs are significantly increased or decreased by psychiatric, medical, physical, and daily living needs.
#4: The Impact of the Child’s Condition on the Family
Finally, the parents of injured children bear the financial burdens of healthcare costs, childcare costs, in-home assistance, home alterations, and lost income, including time off from work or even the permanent inability to work to care for the child full-time. The medical costs alone could be hundreds of thousands of dollars. All proven financial and emotional losses attributable to a birth injury are recoverable in a lawsuit.
What Kinds of Things Can be Used to Calculate a Birth Injury Settlement Amount?
When your child has a birth injury, you want assurance that you can give them the best life possible. You can get financial support for your child’s needs through a birth injury claim. By law, you may claim compensation for economic and non-economic damages to pay for your child’s ongoing physical, emotional, and psychological needs.
Without a medical professional’s negligence, you would not need home modifications, adaptive equipment, special education, physical therapy, and medical cost reimbursement and savings. However, you are entitled to such compensation and more, such as pain and suffering for your child’s enduring injuries and your lost income, past and future. Whatever your child needs to live and whichever losses you incurred because of the negligently caused condition are valid damages for birth injury claims.
How to Substantiate a Birth Injury Settlement Demand
All damages require evidence to substantiate a settlement amount. In other words, no defense counsel or insurance company will take anyone’s word for how much money went to pay for hospitals, doctors, treatments, medication, and the like. Verified medical bills prove these amounts. The same applies to financial losses, such as wages, which require paycheck stubs or employer verification to support a claim for such damages.
The costs associated with a child’s care abound, including items like transportation modifications, special education, occupational therapy, speech therapy, surgery, adaptive equipment and assistive devices, parental loss of income, physical therapy, medication needs, hospital and medical visits, disability accommodations in the home, and many others can be demonstrated with evidence.
Other significant support is the treating physician’s diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis testimony. They can also provide evidence of future medical treatment in a treatment plan, including future surgeries, potential outcomes, pain assessments, and recovery prospects and timelines. They can also help to establish what a child with a specific birth injury needs to live their life. Receipts for home modifications for wheelchair ramps or other necessary changes for a physically challenged child can accurately support damages as well.
A Birth Injury Settlement May be on the Horizon – Don’t Go it Alone
There are no guaranteed settlements in any birth injury case. However, you are far more likely to settle for the highest possible amount of compensation with an experienced attorney’s help than attempting to go it alone. Fortunately, you do not have to calculate the costs and provide the evidence of your child’s injury alone. With the help of our committed team of birth injury attorneys, you will know which documents and other evidence must be gathered, have help assembling every piece of the puzzle to support your claim, understand the estimated timeline until the settlement or trial for your child’s case, be kept up to date on the progress of birth injury settlement negotiations, and find the compelling medical expert evaluation and support necessary to show that medical negligence is the reason for your child’s birth injury. We handle all of these things on your behalf as we fight for the maximum settlement in your child’s birth injury case.
If you have questions about your child’s birth injury settlement prospects, contact us at 866-708-8617 today to receive a free case review or fill out our convenient form to request a free consultation with our accomplished birth injury legal team.
