Medical Misdiagnosis

When you get medical treatment, you have every right to expect the doctor will review your medical history, listen carefully to your description of what you’re experiencing, order appropriate tests or imaging, and, if necessary, send you to the appropriate specialist. If your doctor gives you a clean bill of health, you should feel confident that you are well and need to do nothing further.

Although it is reasonable for you to expect a thorough workup of your symptoms, leading to a correct diagnosis, your doctor may fall short of your expectation. Failure to diagnose and misdiagnosis of an illness or injury is the basis of many medical malpractice lawsuits. According to a study by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, failure to diagnose and misdiagnosis causes more than 100,000 Americans to die or become permanently disabled each year.

A misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose a condition may result in improper medical care, delayed treatment, or no treatment, in turn, might result in a worsening of the medical condition or death. The misdiagnosis of a health condition can be especially devastating when it robs patients and their families of the valuable time necessary to effectively treat a medical condition. If you or a loved one was misdiagnosed and suffered injuries, contact Kasan Law’s attorneys for a free consultation with a medical malpractice attorney.

Common Types of Misdiagnosis

There are several different types of errors that physicians can make that might lead to a misdiagnosis:

• Missed diagnosis
• Wrong diagnosis
• Delayed diagnosis

Our law firm handles a wide range of matter involving failure to diagnose and misdiagnosis, including:

• Stroke misdiagnosis
• Cancer misdiagnosis
• Heart attack misdiagnosis
• Breast cancer misdiagnosis
• Lung cancer misdiagnosis
• Colon cancer misdiagnosis
• Medication misdiagnosis

Is the Misdiagnosis or Failure to Diagnose Medical Malpractice?

If you can establish that a doctor, hospital, or other healthcare provider’s professional negligence caused you or a family member to suffer injury or death, when the diagnosis or treatment received did not meet the standard of care recognized by the Illinois medical community, medical malpractice has occurred. Standard of care means what a reasonably competent doctor in the same practice area would do under the same or similar circumstances for the same or similar patient.

Misdiagnosis cases are challenging to prove because a diagnostic error is not always evidence of malpractice. In order to recover compensation, the patient bringing the misdiagnose case must prove:

1. A doctor-patient relationship which imposed a duty to provide the patient with the standard of care that would be expected of any reasonably competent physician in the same practice area or specialty.

• The doctor fell short or failed to live up to the standard of care in diagnosing the patient’s condition.

• The doctor’s failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis proximately caused actual harm and demonstrable damages.

• The doctor’s failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis was the direct cause of the patient’s damages.

•  If the problem was diagnosed accurately and on time, the patient’s outcome would have been different.

Failure to diagnose cases involve disputes related to the applicable standard of care and whether the doctor’s failure to diagnose caused the patient’s injury. Causation is also a necessary, and often problematic, element for the patient to prove. If a misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis occurred, that alone is insufficient to establish causation. A patient must establish that the doctor’s misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis caused their injury or illness to progress past the point it would have been had the doctor correctly diagnosed the condition. 

If the doctor ordered all the appropriate tests and screenings, but the results didn’t point to the proper diagnosis, you may not be able to prove malpractice. Also, if your doctor neglected to do something that should have been done, but you were not harmed, you will not have a case. 

Free Consultation

At Kasan Law, we take all personal injury cases on a contingency basis, which means you will not pay any legal fees unless we get you compensation for your case. Our consultations are free and carry no obligations.

If you or a loved one has been injured due to a misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose, contact our Chicago and Illinois medical malpractice attorneys to schedule your free consultation and case review by calling (312) 300-6724, e-mailing us at Info@LawKasan.com, or schedule your consultation online.