Generally, a medical malpractice claim can be brought against a licensed health care provider. This can include a person, corporation, facility or institution licensed by the state to provide health care or professional services, or an officer, employee, or agent thereof acting in the course and scope of his employment. A claim can be brought against physicians, dentists, nurses, therapists, technicians, hospitals, and pharmacists, among others. A physician commits medical malpractice if he fails to act in the same manner a reasonably prudent physician in the same field of medicine would act under the same circumstances. Nurses, therapists and other health care providers, and the hospitals or clinics they work for, can be held responsible for their failure to meet accepted standards of care in their particular field. In Illinois, a hospital may be held liable for the acts of its independently contracted physicians under certain circumstances.
Medical negligence claims against physicians employed at state medical facilities are not considered to arise from their employment, but from their individual duties to their patients so such actions are not subject to governmental immunity. Neither a local public entity nor a public employee acting within the scope of his employment is liable for injury arising from diagnosing or failing to diagnose that a person is afflicted with an illness or addiction; administration, with due care, of the treatment prescribed for an illness or addiction; or failure to admit a person to a medical facility operated or maintained by a local public entity. However, neither a local public entity nor its employees are exonerated for the negligent or wrongful prescription or administration of treatment.
