Prince George’s County Failure to Diagnose Lawyer
Whether you are getting a check-up from your primary care physician or seeking emergency treatment at an urgent care clinic or hospital, you should be able to trust that the physicians who treat you will accurately identify the problem you are dealing with and provide prompt and appropriate care for it. Unfortunately, it is more common than you might like to think for doctors to misinterpret symptoms or miss them entirely, potentially resulting in them not diagnosing an ailment that ends up having serious repercussions for their patient.
Establishing a doctor’s failure to diagnose and properly treat can be complex, particularly if you try to do it without a seasoned malpractice attorney’s guidance. Once retained, a Prince George’s County failure to diagnose lawyer could help you collect and preserve key evidence, incorporate that information into a comprehensive claim, and proactively demand restitution for every form of harm your physician’s misconduct will cause you.
What Counts as a Failure to Diagnose in Legal Terms?
There are numerous reasons a doctor might fail to diagnose a serious injury or illness in one of their patients, not all of which are egregious errors born from extreme carelessness or incompetence. As experienced attorneys know, many failures to diagnose in Prince George’s County and around Maryland stem from seemingly minor clerical and communication errors, like a lost piece of paperwork, a misunderstood order to a subordinate, or a misreading of results from a diagnostic test.
While these mistakes may seem small, they can have incredibly harmful consequences when they lead to a patient not getting the care they need for an acute medical condition. They can also serve as the basis for civil litigation if they violate an applicable “standard of care.”
The standard of care for physicians is the level of service or treatment an equally qualified doctor would have provided in the same situation. Filing suit over this kind of error typically involves proving—with help from qualifying medical experts—that another doctor likely would not have made the same mistake.
Recovering for Losses After a Misdiagnosis
Depending on the circumstances, a doctor’s failure to correctly diagnose a patient’s condition might only lead to that patient suffering minor discomfort until the correct diagnosis is made. However, in other scenarios, they could suffer life-altering or even life-threatening damage while their condition worsens unnecessarily. If a failure to diagnose leads directly to a patient suffering harm that is serious enough to necessitate professional medical care all on its own, that patient may have grounds to demand restitution through a civil claim for losses, including:
- Additional medical expenses
- Lost work income or future earning capacity
- Physical pain and suffering
- Emotional anguish and psychological trauma
- Lost quality of life
If a failure to diagnose in Prince George’s County results in someone’s premature death, a qualified attorney could help family members pursue compensation for their own losses stemming from that wrongful death.
Talk To a Prince George’s County Failure to Diagnose Attorney Today
Even a few days of delay in receiving the proper diagnosis can have severe and possibly life-changing consequences. When you suffer serious harm because a doctor fails to meet the standard of care they owe you, taking prompt legal action could be vital to minimizing the damage their actions have on you in the long term.
Guidance from a seasoned Prince George’s County failure to diagnose lawyer can make a world of difference in how your case proceeds. Call today to schedule a consultation.
