Many medical malpractice cases involve a wrong diagnosis or a delayed diagnosis. If a doctor’s mistake leads to the wrong treatment, delayed care, or no treatment, a patient’s condition can get worse and may even become fatal. However, a diagnosis mistake alone does not automatically mean there is a medical malpractice case.
Keep reading to learn what a patient must show in a medical malpractice case involving a wrong diagnosis, the common types of diagnosis mistakes, and why these errors happen more often in emergency rooms. Call Hollingsworth Law today to talk to an experienced Virginia medical malpractice lawyer.
Using Diagnostic Errors to Prove Medical Malpractice
Doctors are not legally responsible for every diagnosis mistake. In most cases, a patient must prove three things to win a medical malpractice case based on a wrong diagnosis:
- The doctor was responsible for the patient’s care
- The doctor did not provide care at an acceptable level
- The doctor’s mistake caused real harm to the patient
Most medical malpractice cases focus on two main questions: Did the doctor make a mistake, and did that mistake harm the patient?
Did the Doctor Commit Negligence?
A wrong or delayed diagnosis by itself does not mean the doctor was negligent. Even careful and skilled doctors can make diagnosis mistakes. The main issue is whether the doctor did their job properly. This means looking at what the doctor did and did not do when making the diagnosis, including how they considered and ruled out possible conditions before choosing a diagnosis.
Differential diagnosis is the process doctors use to figure out what is wrong with a patient. After examining the patient, the doctor lists possible conditions and ranks them from most likely to least likely. The doctor then checks each possible diagnosis by closely examining the patient, asking questions about symptoms and medical history, ordering tests, or sending the patient to a specialist.
As the doctor gathers more information, some possible diagnoses are ruled out, and one may remain. However, because medicine is not exact, this does not always happen. Sometimes, as the doctor learns more, new information may come up that adds other possible diagnoses to the list.
In a medical malpractice case involving a diagnosis mistake, the patient must show that another doctor with similar training, in the same situation, would not have made the same error. In simple terms, this usually means proving one of two things:
- The doctor considered the correct diagnosis but did not order the right tests or consult a specialist to properly check it.
- The doctor failed to consider the correct diagnosis, even though a careful and competent doctor in the same situation would have.
Diagnostic Testing Errors
Sometimes a doctor makes the wrong diagnosis because they relied on test results that were not accurate. These could include lab tests, X-rays, scans, or other medical tests. This usually happens in one of two ways:
- A human mistake happened. For example, samples were mixed up or contaminated, the test was done the wrong way, results were read incorrectly, or something important was missed on an X-ray or lab slide.
- The medical equipment used for the diagnosis did not work properly.
Even if the doctor is not legally responsible in this situation, someone else may be, such as a technician who read a lab slide incorrectly. The patient still must show that the mistake happened because of negligence.
Was a Misdiagnosis the Cause of the Patient’s Injury?
The patient must also show that the doctor’s mistake or delay made their condition worse than it would have been with a correct and timely diagnosis, and that this made treatment harder or less effective.
For example, a delayed cancer diagnosis may mean the patient needed harsher treatment, like chemotherapy, or the patient may have died because the cancer spread and could no longer be treated. Sometimes a patient can still show harm even if the condition is treatable. For example, with some cancers, delaying treatment can increase the chance the cancer comes back.
In rare cases, a doctor may diagnose a patient with a condition they do not actually have. In those situations, the patient may still show harm, such as anxiety, stress, health problems, and costs from treatment that was not needed. Doctors and other medical professionals can make diagnosis mistakes in several ways, including:
- Missed diagnosis: The doctor says nothing is wrong when the patient actually has an illness.
- Wrong diagnosis: The doctor diagnoses the wrong condition.
- Delayed diagnosis: The doctor finds the correct problem, but much later than they should have.
- Missed complications: The doctor diagnoses the condition but misses problems that make it worse.
- Missed related condition: The doctor finds one illness but misses another that commonly goes with it.
- Missed unrelated condition: The doctor finds one illness but misses a separate, unrelated illness.
Emergency Room Misdiagnoses
Diagnosis mistakes happen more often in emergency rooms. Doctors have very little time to evaluate patients, which leaves less time to consider all possible diagnoses. Because emergency cases are often serious, a wrong or missed diagnosis is more likely to harm the patient.
In emergency rooms, rare illnesses are easier to overlook. ER doctors are also more prone to overlooking conditions that are uncommon in certain types of patients. For example, a young woman with stomach pain is probably less likely to be diagnosed with a heart attack than an older, overweight man with identical symptoms.
Some conditions are commonly misdiagnosed in emergency rooms, including strokes, heart attacks, strokes, meningitis, and blood clots in the lungs. Appendicitis is especially hard to diagnose in children. It is missed in most kids under 12 and is almost always overlooked in infants.
Hollingsworth Law
Medical malpractice cases follow strict rules that can be very different from state to state. Because of this, it’s often important to get help from an experienced attorney. If you believe a medical mistake caused you or a loved one serious harm, call Hollingsworth Law at (703) 401-9970 or fill out our online contact form to speak with a Virginia medical malpractice lawyer and learn what options may be available to you.