Misdiagnosis is not always, necessarily, medical malpractice. By definition, medical malpractice occurs when medical negligence leads to an undue injury to a patient. Misdiagnosis may be a type of medical negligence, but does not always cause injury to a patient. Here are some common questions and answers regarding misdiagnosis and medical malpractice.
How does a misdiagnosis usually happen?
There are many ways a doctor may misdiagnose a patients symptoms. Typically, a misdiagnosis occurs when a doctor fails to run additional, necessary tests, or misreads test results.
Alternatively, there are cases where a doctor may be so confident that a patient has a particular illness or injury, that he or she will overlook further testing or miss other important symptoms.
What legal rights do patients injured due to misdiagnosis have?
If a patient suffers undue harm due to a doctors misdiagnosis, then he or she has the legal right to bring a claim for medical negligence and medical malpractice. This claim is remedied by ordering the negligent medical professional (or more accurately his/her medical malpractice insurance provider) to pay monetary compensation to the victim.
What if a patient dies due to a misdiagnosis?
If a doctors failure to diagnose accurately leads to the death of a patient, then the family members may file a medical malpractice claim, as well as a wrongful death claim on behalf of the lost loved one.
How long will a misdiagnosis case take to complete?
These cases vary tremendously, but more than 80% are settled out of court in a mater of months. However, those cases which do go to trial may take much longer to complete. Possible as long as several years.
How is misdiagnosis proven?
In order to bring a claim for any type of medical negligence, an expert medical witness will need to be hired to investigate the details of the case, the medical records, test results and other evidence to determine if the doctor was negligent.
The expert medical witness is usually a doctor practicing the same type of medicine as the accused, and will need to show that the defendant deviated from the accepted medical standard of care.
How much is the average misdiagnosis award or settlement?
Again, these cases vary, and the award or settlement amounts can vary from a few hundred thousand dollars to many millions of dollars, depending on the extent of the injury and the financial and emotional loss of the victim and their family.
While settlement amounts in medical malpractice cases are often undisclosed, the cases that do make it to trial and are successful average over $1 Million in jury awards.
How does a patient find out if they have a case?
Always talk to a medical malpractice lawyer. It takes only a few minutes to reach out to local, qualified attorneys on this site, and get legal advice regarding your options to pursue compensation for medical negligence.
