Your doctors and other medical providers decide which tests to run, diagnose your illnesses or medical conditions, and prescribe treatment. They’re responsible for helping you stay healthy, and for helping you fight illness when necessary. You need to be able to rely on them. Unfortunately, sometimes doctors and hospitals don’t live up to the trust you placed in them.
When you’ve been harmed by medical malpractice, you may be entitled to compensation–and you may well need that compensation to cover the additional medical care that’s required due to the negligence and other costs. If you’ve lost a loved one to medical negligence, you may have a wrongful death claim.
Talk to a Salt Lake City Medical Malpractice Lawyer
If you’ve been injured because a doctor or medical facility didn’t live up to their obligations, your best next step is to talk to an experienced medical malpractice attorney. Unfortunately, the medical provider has an incentive to cover up their mistake, which means you may not be getting complete and accurate information about what went wrong and how it impacted you medically. So, it can be difficult to know whether you’ve been a victim of medical malpractice.
At Allred Vogt & Stuart (AVS), our medical malpractice attorneys have extensive experience investigating medical negligence and building medical malpractice cases. We know how to obtain information about your care and assess it for malpractice.
You can schedule a free consultation right now by calling 801-876-7771 or filling out our contact form.
Most Common Types of Medical Malpractice
Medical malpractice occurs any time a doctor or other medical practitioner fails to live up to the accepted standard of care under the circumstances. Some of the most common examples include:
- Misdiagnosis
- Failure to diagnose
- Wrong site or wrong patient surgical errors
- Leaving an object, such as a sponge, inside a surgical patient
- Over or under anesthetizing a patient
- Failure to monitor vital signs during post-surgical recovery
- Birth injuries
- Medication errors
- Inappropriate or delayed treatment
Some of these types of errors sound shocking, such as operating on the wrong patient. Others sound far less dramatic, such as delayed diagnosis. But any type of medical malpractice can have very serious consequences. For example, a delay in diagnosing cancer can make the difference between successful treatment and a terminal diagnosis.
Medical Malpractice Cases in the Salt Lake City Area
Salt Lake City is home to some of the state’s largest and busiest medical facilities, including University of Utah Hospital, Intermountain Medical Center, and St. Mark’s Hospital. Malpractice claims arising from care at these facilities are typically filed in the Third District Court of Salt Lake County, and the pre-litigation notice and panel review process runs through the state’s Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing (DOPL).
One local wrinkle that surprises a lot of clients: the deadline for your notice of intent can differ depending on whether the facility involved is government-run or privately operated. Because University of Utah Hospital and its clinics are part of a state institution, claims against them are subject to Utah’s Governmental Immunity Act, which can shorten certain deadlines. Claims against privately run hospitals like Intermountain or St. Mark’s follow the standard two-year notice timeline. Sorting out which set of rules applies to your case — and doing it quickly — is one of the first things we handle when you come to us.
Utah Medical Malpractice Law
A report released last year put Utah near the bottom of the nation in total annual payouts in compensation for medical errors. You might assume that means Utah has lower rates of medical malpractice, but that’s not necessarily true. The same report shows that the rate of deaths due to medical and surgical complications falls near the median.
One reason the aggregate compensation for medical errors in Utah is relatively low is that the state sets high bars for recovery. That makes it all the more important to work with a Salt Lake City lawyer who has extensive experience with medical malpractice claims specifically. These claims are different from other types of Salt Lake City negligence claims.
Hurdles to Filing a Salt Lake City Medical Malpractice Claim
Utah law makes it harder to file a medical malpractice claim than other types of negligence claims in a few different ways:
- Shorter, sometimes confusing statutes of limitations: While most injury claims in Utah have a four-year statute of limitations, most medical malpractice claims have a two-year cut-off, and some just one year.
- Complex pre-litigation requirements: If you’ve been injured in a car accident, your attorney can simply prepare your complaint and file it. For a medical malpractice claim, Utah law sets up additional hoops to jump through, including 90 days notice before filing and a pre-litigation panel review.
The Negligence Standard in a Medical Malpractice Case
In most Utah negligence cases, such as car accident claims, a defendant can be found to have been negligent if the jury believes they failed to exercise the care a reasonably prudent person would have exercised under the circumstances. That’s a straightforward assessment that jurors can make on their own, with instruction from the judge.
In a medical malpractice case, the standard is different. The question is whether the doctor or other medical provider lived up to the standard of care accepted in the medical profession. That standard of care differs depending on the situation presented to the provider, and even based on whether the doctor was a general practitioner or was a specialist in the field.
Establishing the appropriate standard of care requires one or more expert witnesses. The physician testifying as an expert on the accepted standard of care typically must be an expert in the same field. For example, a family doctor couldn’t testify to the appropriate standard of care for a neurosurgeon.
Limits on Damages in Utah Medical Malpractice Cases
Since 2010, Utah has had a $450,000 cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. Non-economic damages include harm you suffered that doesn’t have a direct price tag, such as pain and suffering and loss of quality of life.
When the statute was enacted, it included some provisions for increases to account for inflation. However, the statutory increases stopped in May of 2010, meaning that the cap hasn’t been adjusted for inflation in more than 15 years. If the cap had kept pace with inflation, it would be just shy of $690,000 in 2026.
A 2025 change in Utah law further limited damages by changing the way economic damages associated with medical expenses are calculated. The law change also made it more difficult to qualify for punitive damages.
How a Salt Lake City Medical Malpractice Lawyer Can Help
As you can see, pursuing a Utah medical malpractice claim can be complicated and challenging. When you work with an experienced Salt Lake City lawyer at AVS, your attorney can:
- Determine the deadline for filing your claim based on the type of medical malpractice, when the negligence occurred, when you became aware of it, and whether the medical facility was private or government-operated.
- Take responsibility for administrative requirements, such as sending the pre-litigation notice and requesting the pre-litigation review panel.
- Finding and working with the right expert or experts to establish medical negligence in your case and to evaluate and prove your damages.
- Securing and reviewing all relevant medical records and providing them to experts for assessment.
- Putting together a thorough, well-documented demand for compensation to open settlement negotiations.
- Negotiating with the insurance company’s lawyers to try to secure fair compensation without trial.
- Managing the pre-trial exchange of information, including taking depositions (where parties and witnesses answer questions under oath), exchanging documents, and helping you prepare your responses to written questions and requests for evidence.
- Prepare your case and fight for you at trial, if that’s the best option for you.
Some medical malpractice and injury law firms take on as many cases as possible and aim for quick settlements. That piles up fees for the firm, but it isn’t always the best thing for the client. An AVS medical malpractice lawyer will always treat you like the individual you are. We’ll learn the details of your case in depth, and we’ll learn what’s most important to you. To learn more about how we can help you fight for the compensation you deserve, call 801-876-7771 or fill out our contact form right now. AVS is located at 257 East 200 South, Suite 1075, Salt Lake City, Utah 84111, and represents medical malpractice victims throughout the Salt Lake Valley and across Utah.
The initial consultation is free and there’s no obligation.
