Medical malpractice under Georgia law involves a health care provider’s failure to meet the accepted standard of care, resulting in harm to a patient. The claim measures the provider’s conduct against what a competent provider would have done in similar circumstances.
The standard of care is the benchmark. A provider is judged by the degree of skill and care that a competent practitioner in the same field would have used, not by whether the outcome was good. Consider a physician who overlooks a textbook warning sign a careful colleague would have pursued: that falls short of it.
A deviation must have caused harm. Establishing malpractice requires not only a departure from the standard but proof that the departure injured the patient. A lapse that changed nothing, or harm the lapse did not cause, leaves the claim incomplete.
Expert testimony generally carries it. Because the standard is a matter of medical judgment, a qualified expert ordinarily must establish what it required and how the provider strayed from it. A juror cannot supply that judgment unaided.
Medical malpractice in Georgia rests on the standard of care, a deviation that caused harm, and the role of expert testimony. Because the benchmark is what a competent practitioner would have done rather than a perfect result, the contest often turns on expert testimony about whether the provider’s judgment fell within accepted bounds.