Wrong and Misdiagnosis Medical Malpractice

    GOLDEN, CO, February 02, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ -- When your health is suffering, you rely on the expertise of healthcare professionals to provide a diagnosis and proper treatment. As any reasonable person would, you expect the diagnosis to be correct. Unfortunately, misdiagnosis sometimes occurs.

What is a Misdiagnosis?

A misdiagnosis occurs when a physician diagnoses you with the wrong condition. The danger of a misdiagnosis is that you could receive the wrong treatment indefinitely, allowing your actual condition to progress and worsen.

For cancer, particularly, misdiagnosis can be severely detrimental. Cancer tends to be much more treatable in its early stages. If your cancer goes undetected because of misdiagnosis, it may metastasize, requiring more invasive treatment when it is correctly diagnosed.

Proving Negligence in a Misdiagnosis Claim

A doctor is not necessarily negligent if a misdiagnosis occurs. Competent, experienced doctors are capable of making mistakes even though they are acting reasonably and in a way that any reasonable doctor would replicate. For this reason, medical malpractice claims stemming from misdiagnosis can be difficult to prove. In your claim, you and your attorney must prove:

- The doctor owed you a duty of care. You and the doctor had entered a professional relationship in which the doctor was responsible for your care.

- The doctor was negligent. The doctor did not provide medical care meeting accepted standards of the medical community.

- The doctor's negligence caused your injury. An essential component of a medical malpractice claim is an actual injury. Without injury, medical malpractice did not occur.

Negligence can be thought of as carelessness that a reasonable doctor would not exercise in similar circumstances. It may be that your doctor was negligent at some point during the diagnosis process. For example, your doctor may have neglected to consider an obvious diagnosis that another doctor would have surely considered. Or, your doctor may not have ordered proper testing for your diagnosis.

In other cases, the diagnosing doctor is not the individual at fault. During the diagnosis process, errors during laboratory testing can lead to a wrong diagnosis. For example, a lab technician may have performed the testing procedure incorrectly, or the equipment used may have been defective.

If you think negligence may have contributed to your misdiagnosis, you should consult an experienced attorney. If negligence did play a role, you may be entitled to compensation for your injury-related expenses. Oftentimes, people who have been diagnosed with the wrong medical condition face expenses much higher than would have been the case if diagnosed properly.

To learn more about medical malpractice, please visit the website of the experienced medical malpractice attorneys in Pennsylvania at Atlee, Hall & Brookhart LLP, serving clients in Philadelphia and Lancaster.

Website: http://www.atleehall.com

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