The Investigation

Medical malpractice often results in catastrophic injuries that affect every aspect of a person’s life, and can also have life-altering effects on their respective families. The Law Offices of Jorge L. Flores, P.A., in Miami, Florida, understands that behind every potential claim is a family searching for answers; the investigation phase is where those answers are found.

Before a medical malpractice lawsuit can ever be filed in this state, our team must conduct an exhaustive forensic investigation. We do not simply collect records and hope for the best; we dismantle the clinical timeline piece by piece, identify every deviation from the accepted standard of care, and build the kind of case that forces the defense to take our clients seriously from the very first notice.

Under Section 456.057 of the Florida Statutes, healthcare practitioners and facilities are required to furnish complete copies of a patient’s medical records upon receipt of a valid written authorization. Altering those records after an incident constitutes a direct violation of the statute, and it is a practice that our team is trained to detect and expose.

Our investigation begins here, by acquiring every document surrounding the alleged injury, including, but not limited to, admission and discharge summaries, daily physician progress notes, nurse triage notes and flowsheets, laboratory and diagnostic imaging reports, operative and post-operative records, pharmacy dispensing logs, and medical device data.

It is significant to note that obtaining these records in their complete and unaltered form is oftentimes far more difficult than families expect. Modern Electronic Health Record systems generate vast amounts of hidden metadata; digital fingerprints that track every interaction with the patient’s chart. Our forensic team extracts and analyzes EHR audit trails, which reveal the exact timestamps of chart access, modifications, and deletions made after an adverse event.

Under Florida law, no medical malpractice claim can proceed without the corroboration of a qualified medical expert who specializes in the same or similar specialty as the prospective defendant. We do not retain professional testifiers or retired physicians who no longer practice, because the credibility of the expert is inseparable from the credibility of the case. Our firm works with elite, board-certified specialists, actively practicing professionals, academic department heads, and recognized leaders in their fields, who review the reconstructed medical records and render an independent opinion on whether the standard of care was breached.

We advance these costs entirely. Our clients pay nothing for these expert reviews or any other costs of the investigation unless we recover compensation on their behalf.

The expert’s role is twofold. First, they define the exact standard of care that applied to the clinical scenario; meaning what a reasonably competent specialist in that same field would have done under those same circumstances. Second, they determine whether the provider’s actions constituted a definitive deviation from that standard. If the answer is yes, and the deviation caused our client’s injuries, we move forward. If the answer is no, we tell our clients the truth. That honesty is what separates a meticulous investigation from a reckless one, and it is what our clients deserve from the attorneys who represent them.

Florida imposes one of the most demanding causation standards in American medical malpractice law, which means that injured patients and their families face an extraordinarily high evidentiary threshold before they can pursue compensation for their suffering and damages. Here is what that means in practical terms.

It is not enough to prove that a doctor made a mistake, and this distinction is what makes Florida medical malpractice litigation so demanding. We must also prove that the mistake, and not the patient’s underlying condition, is what caused the harm. The Florida Supreme Court established this rule in the landmark case of Gooding v. University Hospital Building, Inc.

This is precisely why the investigation conducted by our firm on behalf of every client is so relentless and so exhaustive. We construct ironclad causal timelines by mapping the patient’s physiological deterioration against the exact moments where intervention was clinically indicated. Our retained experts perform counterfactual analyses: if the provider had acted at Hour 2 instead of Hour 10, what is the peer-reviewed statistical probability that the outcome would have been different? We refuse to advance a claim unless we can demonstrate causation to this exacting standard, because anything less would be a disservice to our clients and to the integrity of the case.

From the moment our firm is retained, we issue comprehensive litigation hold notices and preservation letters to every prospective defendant. These notices mandate the immediate sequestration of all potentially relevant materials in their complete and unaltered state, including, but not limited to, physical tissue specimens, pathology slides, radiographic imaging, surveillance footage, staffing records, internal incident reports, and the complete Electronic Health Record in its native digital format with all associated audit trails, metadata, and access logs.

We do this because hospitals oftentimes have every incentive to let inconvenient evidence disappear, and we refuse to allow that to happen.

If you suspect that a medical error has caused serious injury to you or a loved one, the Law Offices of Jorge L. Flores, P.A., has the resources, expertise, and tenacity to conduct the comprehensive forensic investigation necessary to determine whether you have a viable claim under Florida law. From our offices in Miami, Florida, we provide comprehensive pre-trial preparation that may include, but is not limited to, forensic medical record analysis, the retention of elite expert witnesses, the deployment of life care planners and forensic economists, and the aggressive preservation of all critical evidence. We advance all costs of the investigation on behalf of our clients, and we will work hard to achieve the best possible outcome either at trial or through settlement.

P.S. The hospital where the injury occurred has already retained legal counsel. Their risk management team has reviewed the records and begun constructing a defense. At the Law Offices of Jorge L. Flores, P.A., we move with the same urgency on your behalf; because the operative records, the audit trails, and the nursing documentation that prove exactly what happened are the evidence that defense teams work hardest to sanitize.

Related: Medical Malpractice · Wrongful Death · Brain & Spinal Cord Injuries · Birth Injuries