Illinois physician and emergency medicine specialist Eugene Saltzberg MD combines decades of hospital practice with long standing teaching and advisory work. Trained in psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana and awarded his MD by the Chicago Medical School, he completed residency at Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital and later held staff and leadership roles at facilities including Condell Medical Center, Grant Hospital, Highland Park Hospital, and Aspen Valley Hospital. Alongside clinical care in emergency departments and urgent care settings, he has taught at Northwestern University School of Medicine, Rosalind Franklin University, and the Chicago Medical School, where he serves as an associate clinical professor. His consulting work for the State of Illinois and his writing on medical ethics align with the careful, evidence based approach required when medical experts review patient records in malpractice lawsuits.
How Medical Experts Review Patient Records in Malpractice Lawsuits
In medical malpractice lawsuits, the patient’s medical record often provides key evidence. The record gives a time-stamped account of what clinicians observed, decided, and did during care. Medical experts use that documentation to evaluate whether treatment met the standard of care and whether any departure plausibly contributed to the alleged harm. When the record later includes corrections, a proper process shows what changed, who made the change, and when.
A patient record includes far more than a physician’s narrative note. It typically contains nursing documentation, laboratory results, imaging reports, medication orders, and discharge instructions. Under HIPAA, these materials fall within the “designated record set,” which includes medical and billing records used to make decisions about an individual. In malpractice litigation, parties often obtain this same documentation through authorizations or court processes, allowing medical experts to reconstruct what information the care team had at each decision point.
Experts also evaluate how the care team documented updates. When clinicians add an amendment or enter a delayed note, the expert looks for clear dating, authorship, and a notation that preserves the original entry rather than overwriting it. That review helps the court distinguish routine clarification from a change that raises record-integrity concerns.
Timing often drives the medical questions in a negligence claim. Experts lay out when symptoms appeared, when clinicians ordered tests, and when clinicians started, adjusted, or stopped treatment. They then evaluate whether delays or missed opportunities could plausibly affect the outcome. They avoid hindsight bias by judging decisions based on what the team knew at the time, not on the eventual result.
A central task for experts is identifying missing or inconsistent documentation. For example, a lab result may indicate a serious condition without a recorded follow-up, or a nursing note may describe patient deterioration without a documented clinical response. While such gaps do not establish negligence on their own, they raise questions that providers and facilities must be prepared to explain.
When the record contains the expected information, experts focus on medical reasonableness in context. They identify what data the clinician had at each moment, including documented assessments and test results. They compare the choices made to what similarly trained clinicians would likely do under similar circumstances. Clinical guidelines and professional standards can help frame that comparison, but the expert still ties the opinion to the case-specific facts.
Ethics codes and licensing guidance expect experts to offer impartial opinions grounded in training and a careful record review. Even when a party retains an expert, the expert’s role remains evaluation, not advocacy. Courts screen expert testimony and can exclude opinions that fail reliability or relevance requirements, and professional bodies may discipline false or misleading testimony.
To make the analysis useful, experts explain opinions in plain language. They translate technical entries into a chronological narrative that shows what clinicians saw, what they decided, and what the documentation supports. When helpful, they use a concise summary to orient the judge or jury to key turning points.
Expert analysis does not determine the outcome of a malpractice case, but it often clarifies what the dispute is truly about. Once an expert explains the medical record and the applicable standards, judges assess admissibility and juries evaluate breach, causation, and damages. A well-supported opinion helps the court focus on what the evidence can substantiate and what the record cannot resolve. In this way, expert review transforms a complex medical chart into a clearer set of questions the legal system can meaningfully address.
About Eugene Saltzberg MD
Eugene Saltzberg MD is an emergency medicine physician and educator licensed in Illinois, Colorado, and Wisconsin. He earned his medical degree from the Chicago Medical School after studying psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana, then completed residency at Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital. He consults for the State of Illinois, advises urgent care centers and Lambs Farm, and has long volunteered as a medical advisor and director for adults with mental disabilities. He teaches at the Chicago Medical School Department of Emergency Medicine.
