Medical Malpractice Lawsuits for Failure to Diagnose
If your doctor fails to timely or accurately diagnose a health condition or disease like cancer, it can have devastating consequences. Even a short delay in diagnosing certain types of cancer can cause the cancer to progress from an early, treatable stage to a later terminal stage. Doctors have an obligation to timely and accurately diagnose cancer and other health conditions and when the fail to do that it is often the result of medical negligence (malpractice).
The lawyers at Penn Law Firm have expertise in handling medical malpractice lawsuits against doctors (and other health care professionals) for negligently failing to timely or accurately diagnose cancer and other health conditions. If your doctor failed to diagnose your cancer in time, you may be able to file a medical malpractice lawsuit and get compensation. Call our Maryland medical malpractice lawyers today at 443-475-0269 to see if you have a case, or contact us online.
When Does Failure to Diagnose Amount to Medical Malpractice?
A crucial role of a doctor is to identify and diagnose a patient’s medical condition accurately. The significance of a precise and timely diagnosis cannot be overstated, as it paves the way for an effective treatment plan. The timing of a diagnosis can, in many instances, be a decisive factor between life and death. Despite this, studies have shown that misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose occurs much more frequently than you would think.
While misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose forms the basis for numerous medical malpractice lawsuits, it’s essential to understand that not every delayed or incorrect diagnosis automatically constitutes malpractice. Doctors are not legally held to a standard of perfection in their diagnostic endeavors.
For a failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis to be considered medical malpractice, it must result from negligence in the doctor’s diagnostic process. In simpler terms, a misdiagnosis lawyer would need to demonstrate that the doctor deviated from accepted medical practices while attempting to diagnose the patient’s condition. Also, a failure to diagnose only qualifies as malpractice if it leads to actual harm to the patient.
Required Elements in a Failure to Diagnose Malpractice Case
To pursue a medical malpractice lawsuit against a doctor for failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis, your medical malpractice lawyer must establish three fundamental elements: negligence, injury, and causation.
Negligence: Proving negligence in a failure to diagnose case requires demonstrating that the doctor deviated from the standard of medical care in their diagnostic efforts. Examples include inadequate diagnostic testing (e.g., opting for an x-ray instead of a CT scan) or misinterpreting test results (e.g., overlooking a cancer tumor on a mammogram). This element is always one of the most important and contested issued in an failure to diagnose malpractice case. Doctors never admit that they were negligent in failing to diagnose something.
Injury: Merely experiencing a negligent failure to diagnose is not enough for a malpractice claim. A critical requirements is that the misdiagnosis or delay in diagnosis must result in actual physical harm or injury. This principle aligns with the “no harm, no foul” rule. This element is often a major issue in cases involving relatively short delays in diagnosis things like cancer. Doctors will often argue that even if there was a 1 year delay in diagnosing the cancer, the patient’s prognosis was not any different.
Causation: The plaintiff must establish that the doctor’s misdiagnosis directly caused their alleged injuries. In essence, it must be demonstrated that the injuries would not have occurred if the doctor had correctly diagnosed the condition. This involves countering the argument that even if there was a mistake, the harm would have transpired anyway.
Common Types of Failure to Diagnose Malpractice Cases
Failure to diagnose any type of disease or health condition can be the basis of medical malpractice lawsuits. However, there are certain types of diseases that most frequently generate medical malpractice lawsuits. Cancer in general is the most common health condition involved in failure to diagnose cases. There are certain types of cancers that get missed or go undiagnosed more frequently and generate more medical malpractice cases. The most common types of failure to diagnose medical malpractice cases in Maryland are discussed briefly below:
Failure to Diagnose Breast Cancer: Failure to diagnose breast cancer malpractice cases are common for 2 reasons. First, breast cancer itself is very common which means there are more opportunities for doctors to miss it. Second, breast cancer can and usually should be timely and accurately diagnosed in most cases. OB/GYNs should have their older patients undergo regular mammogram screenings and manual breast exams which are very effective at diagnosis breat cancer early on. Most failure to diagnose breast cancer cases involve radiologists who misinterpret the mammogram images, or OB/GYNs who negligently fail to follow up when mammograms find signs of cancer.
Failure to Diagnose Colon Cancer: Failure to diagnose colon cancer is on this list for the same 2 reasons as failure to diagnose breast cancer. First, colon cancer is fairly common (over 100,00 cases per year). Second, doctors have very good diagnostic tools (i.e., a colonoscopy) that are usually very effective at diagnosing colon cancer. Most malpractice cases involving failure to diagnose colon cancer involve primary care doctors who negligently fail to have their patient undergo colonoscopies.
Failure to Diagnose Lung Cancer: Lung cancer is also relatively common, which increases the chances of doctors failing to diagnose it in a timely manner. There are also effective diagnostic tools for identifying lung cancer, namely a CT chest scan. The vast majority of lung cancer malpractice cases are brought against radiologist for negligently failing to properly read and interpret signs of lung cancer on chest scans.
Settlement Value of Failure to Diagnose Malpractice Cases
Failure to diagnose is one of the most common types of claims in medical malpractice cases. These types of medical malpractice cases tend to have a slightly lower settlement value compared to other types of medical malpractice cases (e.g., surgical error, birth injury, etc.). Why? There are several reasons.
First, failure to diagnose cases are usually more defensible for the doctor than other types of medical malpractice cases. Timely and accurately diagnosing cancer or another medical condition is not easy and doctors can’t always deliver perfection so there is always room to defend whether the doctor was negligent.
The second reason why failure to diagnose malpractice cases have a lower settlement value is because the extent of the injuries in these cases are often lower. Most diagnostic error cases involve delay in diagnosing cancer (e.g., the doctor diagnosis the patient’s cancer 1 or 2 years after he should have diagnosed it). In these situations, the patient would have had cancer whether it was timely diagnosed or not. So their “injuries” in the malpractice case are limited to what resulted from the 1 or 2 year delay in diagnosis. In some cases, a delay of 1 or 2 years in diagnosis cancer can have devastating results. But in many other cases, a long delay might not make a huge difference.
For example, let’s say a Dr. Smith negligently fails to diagnose Mary’s breast cancer resulting in a delay of about 1 year before the cancer is diagnosed. So instead of being diagnosed in January 2023, Mary’s breast cancer is not diagnosed until January 2024. The question is how much was Mary really “injured” as a result of the 1 year delay? Dr. Smith and his lawyers will argue that the 1-year delay didn’t really do much harm. The defense will argue that the cancer didn’t progress much during the 1-year delay and that Mary’s prognosis and treatment options are pretty much the same as they would have been had the cancer been timely diagnosed. Mary’s lawyers will argue that the cancer progressed from early to late stage and that her future chances of getting cancer again are much higher because of the delay.
Contact Our Failure to Diagnose Malpractice Lawyers
Call our Maryland medical malpractice lawyers today at 443-475-0269 to see if you have a case for negligent failure to diagnose, or contact us online.