Failure to Diagnose Medical Conditions in Arizona

When you’re suffering from a serious injury or illness, one of the most important steps in your treatment involves correctly and timely diagnosing your condition. Diagnosis involves identifying the nature and severity of an illness or injury so you know how to treat it and prevent it from getting worse.

Unfortunately, thousands of people in Arizona and across the country suffer ill effects from diagnostic errors every year. If you were harmed as a result of your provider’s failure to diagnose, you may be entitled to seek compensation in a medical malpractice claim.

At the law firm of Mushkatel, Gobbato, & Kile, P.L.L.C., our Arizona medical malpractice attorneys have the resources and experience needed to help you get back on your feet after a failure to diagnose an injury or illness. Contact us today to learn more about your legal options in an initial consultation.

What Are Some Common Medical Diagnostic Errors?

A diagnostic error occurs when a physician or other medical professional reads or interprets your condition incorrectly. Common examples of diagnostic errors include:

• Misdiagnosing asthma as chronic bronchitis
• Misdiagnosing a heart attack as heartburn, indigestion, gallstones, muscle strain, anxiety, or a panic attack
• Misdiagnosing Lyme disease as the flu, a cold, mononucleosis, or depression
• Misdiagnosing Parkinson’s disease as a stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, or symptoms of severe stress
• Misdiagnosing lupus as fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, or chronic fatigue
• Misdiagnosing a stroke as vertigo, a migraine, or an inner ear infection
• Misdiagnosing appendicitis as gastroenteritis, pelvic inflammatory disease, or a urinary tract infection (UTI)

Recent studies have demonstrated that women and people of color are significantly more likely to be misdiagnosed than patients who are male and white. Researchers suggest explicit and implicit racial biases may lead medical providers to dismiss self-reported information and pain levels from patients of color. Similarly, female patients tend to experience a relative lack of trust among medical professionals, who may also lack knowledge of how certain conditions affect women differently from men.

Is Failure to Diagnose Considered Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice occurs when a medical professional is negligent in a way that causes harm to a patient. However, just because a provider makes a mistake does not necessarily mean they are liable for medical malpractice.

The failure to diagnose a patient’s condition would be considered medical malpractice only if the provider followed a course of action that did not meet accepted medical standards of care to reach their diagnostic decision. Failure to diagnose may count as medical malpractice if a provider:

• Makes an incorrect diagnosis – An incorrect diagnosis or misdiagnosis occurs when a provider decides a patient is suffering from a different condition than what they actually have.

• Makes a delayed diagnosis – A late or delayed diagnosis occurs when a provider fails to diagnose a patient’s condition in a reasonable amount of time.

• Fails to diagnose entirely – A failure to diagnose or a missed diagnosis occurs when a provider decides the patient is not suffering from any condition when, in fact, they are.

• Fails to recognize potential complications – This occurs when a provider makes a correct diagnosis but fails to identify changes in their patient’s condition that could affect the primary diagnosis.

• Fails to diagnose related conditions – This occurs when a provider makes a correct diagnosis but fails to diagnose related conditions that commonly occur along with the primary diagnosis.

Can You Sue for a Failure to Diagnose?

If you suffered preventable harm because a doctor or other medical professional failed to diagnose your condition correctly, you have the right to sue for medical malpractice. To file a valid medical malpractice lawsuit, you must be able to demonstrate the existence of the four following elements:

• You had an established doctor-patient relationship with the provider who made the diagnostic error, which means the provider had a legal obligation to provide you with a certain standard of care.
• Your provider did not provide the appropriate standard of care because they failed to take the steps that another provider with comparable experience would have taken in a similar situation.
• Your provider’s failure to make an accurate diagnosis directly contributed to preventable harm that you would not have experienced if the provider had diagnosed you correctly.
• You incurred measurable losses due to the harm you suffered due to the provider’s failure to diagnose, such as physical injury, additional medical expenses, or lost wages from missed time at work.

Does a Medical Error Always Mean Negligence Occurred?

The difference between a non-negligent medical error and the type of negligence that counts as medical malpractice can be subtle and confusing. Even when everything goes well in a medical setting, it does not always guarantee a positive outcome. Furthermore, a simple mistake does not necessarily count as negligence if another reasonably careful provider with a similar background would have made a similar mistake under the same circumstances.

A medical error could also not rise to the level of negligence if the patient did not suffer any negative consequences from the mistake.

It can be difficult for a patient to determine whether a medical error represents malpractice. That is because modern medical professionals use specialized and unfamiliar language, processes, and tools to do their jobs. To properly investigate a medical error and determine whether medical malpractice occurred, attorneys typically work with independent medical experts who can explain what went wrong and what should have happened instead.

What Happens When a Doctor Misdiagnoses a Condition?

When doctors misdiagnose medical conditions, patients can get hurt. The following statistics illustrate just how common and dangerous diagnostic errors can be:

• Diagnostic errors impact roughly 12 million Americans every year.
• Researchers suspect diagnostic errors cause more negative patient outcomes than all other types of medical errors combined.
• Approximately 40,000 to 80,000 people die every year due to diagnostic errors in American hospitals.
• Common conditions such as vascular events, infections, and cancers account for nearly 75 percent of all disabilities and deaths caused by diagnostic errors.
• Diagnostic errors account for the largest percentage of medical malpractice claims and the most negative patient outcomes than all other medical errors.

Discuss Your Case with an Arizona Medical Malpractice Lawyer

The law firm of Mushkatel, Gobbato, & Kile, P.L.L.C., provides full-service legal representation to our Arizona neighbors who have been injured as a result of negligent medical diagnostic errors. To discuss the details of your case with a knowledgeable medical malpractice attorney, contact us today for your confidential initial case review.

About the Author

Zachary Mushkatel

Zachary Mushkatel discovered his affinity for the law by chance. As a political science major at the University of Arizona, he first aspired to become a professor. But an unexpected invitation to participate on a mock trial team at the university encouraged him to turn his competitive spirit and drive…