Responsibility for Medical Misdiagnosis

Who is responsible for medical misdiagnosis, the insurance company or medical health professionals?

Finding out who is responsible for a case of medical misdiagnosis is
not easy. It's a complex area of the law and medical negligence is also
fairly difficult to prove without a whole host of expert witnesses,
medical charts, test results, and the like. This isn't to say that
medical misdiagnosis cases are unusual; they are, however, cases that
take a long time to wind their way through the courts.

While most physicians do take the time to look after their patients,
assuming the responsibility of a highly trained professional, medical
misdiagnosis is far more common than society would care to admit. "Any
time there is medical negligence someone suffers," said Bradley J.
Hofland, a Las Vegas personal injury attorney with Hofland, Beasley
& Galliher.

By legal standards, there are usually two fairly common oversights
that happen virtually daily in the medical arena – the misdiagnosis of
a patient's condition or the failure to diagnose a problem. "Statistics
exist indicating that roughly 40% of all med mal lawsuits in the U.S.
resulted from a physician's failure to diagnose a patient in time,"
added Hofland.

Misdiagnosis is an interesting area of med mal, as a patient who is
diagnosed with the wrong condition or illness may end up suffering from
a variety of very unpleasant symptoms. The major problem, however, is
not being treated correctly, or not getting treatment for the real
medical condition. What this means is in a situation where "time is of
the essence," and a disease such as cancer is not diagnosed soon
enough, the patient suffers and may not get the treatment they need in
time.

"The other area of concern is options for treatment and the choice
of medications for a person may be totally incorrect if the disease is
misdiagnosed, which means the disease may be exacerbated in a negative
way," commented Las Vegas personal injury attorney Bradley J. Hofland.
These cases are extremely difficult for the person who suffered through
a medical misdiagnosis or a failure to diagnose a problem.

There are many cases that also deal with the failure of doctors to
even diagnose a disease, which again, would be very devastating for the
patient who may receive no help for their illness. Of course, the
illness will worsen over time, possibly to the point where it is no
longer treatable.

The other interesting part about medical misdiagnosis is that
doctors are not always the only people responsible for failure to
diagnose cases. The fact is that insurance companies have, at times,
done patients a serious wrong (through their policies/practices) by
making it difficult for them to receive timely medical intervention.
"It's not too much of a stretch to say that in some instances delays on
the insurance end means the difference between life and death," added
Hofland.

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