Is a Misdiagnosis Considered Medical Malpractice?

Receiving a Serious Medical Diagnosis Can Be Scary and Overwhelming.

Learning that you were misdiagnosed, especially if that misdiagnosis allowed a serious medical situation to become more dire, is a life-changing event. Unfortunately, it’s all too common – an estimated 12 million people in the U.S. experience diagnostic errors each year, according to a study from BMJ Quality & Safety.

If you or a loved one received a medical misdiagnosis, you could be owed compensation under medical malpractice law. However, not all misdiagnoses will fall under this category. Doctors are human, and sometimes make reasonable mistakes when trying to assess a patient’s health. To prove a medical malpractice case, you will need to prove that your doctor acted negligently when diagnosing your condition.

A medical malpractice lawyer can help you understand your case. At Regan Zambri Long, our medical malpractice lawyers have decades of experience helping victims recover compensation for improper medical care. Contact us today for a free consultation.

What Makes a Medical Misdiagnosis Negligent?

To recover compensation in a medical misdiagnosis case, your doctor must have exhibited negligence in giving you care. The best way to measure this, and how the law measures it, is to assess whether your doctor provided you the level of care that would be expected from any other similar doctor in their field.

To try and prove this on your own would be incredibly difficult. An experienced medical malpractice attorney will have relationships with experts they can call on to corroborate your case. An expert medical witness can testify to whether or not another doctor in a similar situation would have been able to appropriately diagnose your condition.

Types of Medical Misdiagnosis

While there is no good kind of misdiagnosis, there are different ways in which a doctor can give the patient incorrect information about their current health. If any of these were the result of negligence, or the doctor failing to offer the appropriate standard of care, you could be eligible to seek medical malpractice compensation.

Different categories of misdiagnosis can include:

• Missed Diagnosis: This means your doctor completely missed there was anything wrong with your health. Instead of offering treatment or any testing, they send you home with a clean bill of health.
• Incorrect Diagnosis: This type of misdiagnosis means your doctor mistook your illness for something entirely different. For instance, they told you you just had vertigo or migraines when you were actually experiencing the early signs of a stroke.
• Delayed Diagnosis: This means your doctor missed the signs of a serious illness for multiple visits. For instance, they did not catch signs of cancer early enough before it began metastasizing. A delayed diagnosis can become incredibly serious if the time it took to diagnose you greatly impacted your quality of life or worst case survival.

Commonly Misdiagnosed Medical Conditions

Not all conditions are as easy to diagnose – especially when certain symptoms could point to a variety of different illnesses. Your doctor is expected to maintain a level of care that includes thorough testing and examination to fully understand your symptoms and what they could possibly mean.

There are a variety of illnesses or conditions that are more commonly misdiagnosed than others. Here are the top ten, according to Everyday Health:

• Cancer
• Heart Attack
• Depression
• Stroke
• Celiac Disease
• Lyme Disease
• Fibromyalgia
• Thyroid Issues
• Aortic Dissection
• Pulmonary Embolism

Get Help From an Experienced Medical Malpractice Lawyer

Medical malpractice cases can be life-altering. Whether your doctor just outright got the diagnosis wrong or took too long to diagnose you, we can help. An experienced medical malpractice lawyer can help show how your doctor failed in their duty of care.

At Regan Zambri Long PLLC, our medical malpractice lawyers have more than 100 years of experience combined. These types of cases can be incredibly complex, and you may need help understanding your specific case. If medical negligence was involved in your medical misdiagnosis, an experienced lawyer can help you seek justice. Contact us today for a free consultation.