Is it Medical Malpractice if a Doctor Misread Ultrasound Results?

If a doctor does not read ultrasounds properly and either misdiagnosis you or provides the wrong treatment on the basis of those misread ultrasounds, then you may have a case for medical malpractice on your hands. A lot depends on the situation, however, and on the results of the doctors mistake.

Understanding Medical Malpractice

Doctors are humans and are thus not infallible and make some mistakes. Some of these mistakes are considered relatively normal or understandable and won't necessarily subject a physician to medical malpractice liability. However, other mistakes rise to the level of a "breach of legal duty" and if this is the case, and if the plaintiff can prove the other required elements of medical malpractice, then the injured patient can recover his damages and make the doctor pay for that mistake.

This means in order to get compensation for medical malpractice resulting from what your doctor did, you must prove:

• That no reasonable doctor would have provided the sort of care your doctor provided. So, if a reasonable doctor would have looked at the ultrasound and read it properly, and it was unreasonable that your doctor did not, then he can be considered negligent and found to have breached his legal duty to you
• That the breach of duty directly led to an injury, or was the proximate cause of some injury you suffered. The negligent misreading of the ultrasound alone is not enough to subject a doctor to malpractice. If you went to a different doctor the very next day and had the ultrasound read properly and got treatment, then you didn't actually suffer any damages from the first doctor's actions and there is nothing you can recover for in court. Likewise, if the result would have been exactly the same had the doctor not made an error in reading your ultrasound, you didn't suffer any compensable damage.

Often, a medical malpractice case will hinge heavily on the testimony of experts. You will need to get qualified physicians to testify on your behalf that the doctor breached his legal duty to you in misreading the ultrasounds. The physician will likely have his own experts to testify as well, so it will come down to who the jury believes and what the jury believes. Remember, though, the plaintiff has the burden of proving the malpractice took place.

Getting Help

If a doctor misread your ultrasound and you suffered damage or injury as a result, you need to consult with a medical malpractice attorney. Your lawyer can review the circumstances of what occurred and can assist you in understanding if you have a case and in building evidence to prove that case in court.