Medical Malpractice At Friends Hospital In Philadelphia

Friends Hospital is an institution in northeastern Philadelphia. Located on a large wooded campus on East Roosevelt Boulevard, Friends Hospital is one of the oldest hospitals of its kind and provides important mental and behavioral assistance for people who need it most.

Friends Hospital

4641 East Roosevelt Boulevard
Philadelphia, PA 19124
(215) 831-4600

Just because it is a mental hospital and not a traditional medical one, though, does not mean that medical malpractice can never happen at Friends Hospital. All medical professionals – from surgeons to doctors to psychologists – have a legal duty to provide reasonable medical care to their patients. If they fail to uphold this responsibility and it causes harm, the personnel at Friends Hospital can be liable under Pennsylvania’s medical malpractice law for the harm they have caused. The personal injury attorneys at Gilman & Bedigian can help you get the compensation that you deserve.

History of Friends Hospital

Friends Hospital was founded way back in 1813 by members of the Quaker movement. Initially called The Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason, Friends Hospital was later renamed the Frankford Asylum for the Insane – after its location in the Frankford neighborhood of Philadelphia – before taking on its current name. Its early founding made Friends Hospital the first private mental institution to open in the United States. It has also never closed, making it the oldest continuously-running mental hospital in the country, public or private.

The deep history of Friends Hospital has also led to its building and grounds being added to the list of National Historic Landmarks.

Today, Friends Hospital continues to provide psychiatric care to people of all ages, sticking to its original mission and Quaker roots. It also offers different programs for adolescents, adults, and seniors, in an attempt to individualize the kinds of care that it provides for each age group.

Medical Malpractice at Friends Hospital

When people think of medical malpractice, they tend to think of surgeons leaving a sponge inside a patient after surgery, or a doctor misdiagnosing a patient. However, medical malpractice can come in a wide variety of shapes and forms. Many of them involve mental health care.

Psychiatrists are tasked with the mental health of their patients, something that is far more ambiguous and difficult to define than someone’s physical health. As a result, correctly diagnosing a mental issue is often far more difficult than diagnosing a physical issue.

If a psychiatrist is negligent in their diagnosis, or makes a mistake in helping to fix a mental problem once the diagnosis has been made, and this leads to you suffering harm, it can amount to medical malpractice of their conduct falls below the standard of reasonable care in the mental health field. You will have suffered harm – severe harm that impacts your emotional and mental well-being – and will have done nothing to have caused it.

You deserve to be compensated.

This is where the medical malpractice attorneys at the Philadelphia law office of Gilman & Bedigian can help. Contact us online for the legal assistance you need.