Failure to Treat/Diagnose: Medical Malpractice
When you visit a healthcare professional for treatment or diagnosis, you trust that you will be taken care of. Most often you are literally putting your life in the hands of the attending physician or nurse. When a doctor or other medical professional fails to treat/diagnose your condition as a result of negligence, you may suffer serious permanent injury, or even wrongful death. Our medical malpractice team at Lerner and Rowe is here to provide legal assistance when a failure to treat/diagnose occurs.
What is a Failure to Treat/Diagnose?
A failure to treat/diagnose can occur in many different ways. Essentially, it’s when a physician, nurse, or some other healthcare professional fails to take the proper steps to treat or diagnose a condition in a patient, which leads to further harm. Some examples of failures to treat/diagnose include the following:
- Diagnosing a condition based on incorrect test results
- Incorrectly interpreting test results, which leads to an incorrect diagnosis and treatment
- Failing to perform the required tests and procedures
- Failing to treat or diagnose a patient at all, usually based on an inability to pay
- Not letting a patient know about all available treatment options
- Not referring a patient to a specialist when the medical condition requires one
- Unnecessarily delaying diagnosis or treatment when the condition requires immediate attention
NOTE: This is not an exhaustive list, and any action (or lack of action) outside the reasonable standard of care that results in harm could fall under medical malpractice. If you’re unsure of whether medical malpractice took place, contact Lerner and Rowe right away.
What Can Be Done?
There are three elements a plaintiff must prove to show that medical malpractice took place when it came to the failure to treat/diagnose:
- A medical relationship existed at the time of the failure to treat/diagnose
- The hospital, clinic, physician, nurse, or other healthcare professional acted negligently
- The patient suffered injury, loss or wrongful death as a direct result of such negligence
Medical Relationship – A medical relationship is established when a physician, nurse, or other healthcare professional has the responsibility to diagnosis and/or treat a patient. Documents such as medical records, doctor’s notes, medication receipts, treatment bills, and others documentation can help prove that a medical relationship existed at the time of the failure to treat/diagnose the patient’s condition.
Negligence – Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals must act with a reasonable standard of care. It’s the patient’s job to prove that the responsible party breached that standard of care and acted negligently. Helpful evidence includes testimony by specialists and other experts who can tell whether the responsible party acted in a way that others in similar circumstances would not have.
Harm – It’s not enough that negligence occurred. The patient must also prove that they suffered harm or death as a result of the health care professional’s negligence. This could be, for instance, that a condition worsened because of untimely care, or perhaps that a patient even died because of incorrect or a lack of proper care or treatment.
Suffer an Injury from Medical Malpractice?
It can be difficult to navigate a failure to treat/diagnose the case. If you or someone you know suffered injury from the negligence of a medical professional, contact Lerner and Rowe Injury Attorneys right away. Our compassionate and relentless medical malpractice team knows how to pursue the compensation you deserve.
Call us anytime at 844-977-1900. Also, you can drop in during our office hours Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. Furthermore, you can get in touch with us online via a contact form or via our convenient LiveChat feature.
Don’t keep your questions to yourself. Contact Lerner and Rowe’s medical malpractice team today!