Medical malpractice can take a variety of forms, but commonly stems from misdiagnosis. Misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis leads to incorrect or mistimed treatment. In the extreme, this failure can lead to death. However, a mistake in diagnosis is not in and of itself grounds for a medical malpractice lawsuit.
A medical malpractice lawsuit based on misdiagnosis requires a patient to prove (1) a doctor-patient relationship existed; (2) the doctor was negligent; and (3) the doctor’s negligence caused injury to the patient. A misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis itself may not be sufficient evidence of negligence. Diagnostic errors can occur even when using highly skilled care. Often, the key is an evaluation of how the doctor arrived at the diagnosis.
Doctors use a systematic method referred to as “differential diagnosis” to identify a patient’s condition. Doctors evaluate a patient, list possible diagnosis, perform tests and observations, ask questions, and confer with specialists. This process eliminates some of the “candidates” and, ideally, there is a single remaining diagnosis. If there is a misdiagnosis, the lawsuit must prove that another doctor, in a similar specialty, would not have misdiagnosed the patient; thus proving that the original doctor failed to include the diagnosis on the original list or failed to perform the proper tests. In some cases, a diagnostic failure can be the result of faulty or inaccurate tests. Equipment might fail or there could be human error in the testing process. In these cases, the fault and liability may be with the technician or laboratory.
In a medical malpractice lawsuit, the patient must also prove that the misdiagnosis caused the patient’s condition to worsen and that this progression had a negative impact upon treatment. A patient might show that the misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis resulted in a more severe treatment regimen, or that a delay raised the risk for other conditions, or that a misdiagnosis resulted in treatment for a non-existent illness and this treatment resulted in unnecessary stress, harm or financial expenses.
Source: Nolo
