Medical Malpractice: Cancer Misdiagnosis

It's only natural that you will trust your doctor fully and shall expect him to make a correct and timely diagnosis always.

However, in reality, it's often seen that doctors misdiagnose cases, particularly cancer, and which can have some life-changing and even tragic consequences in the long run. As a sufferer, the law entitles you to make a claim against the erring medical practitioner, hospital, or diagnostic clinic, which has to pay up if you win the lawsuit or if they agree to settle to save themselves money and time.

Proving cancer misdiagnosis

Misdiagnosis is said to have taken place when a qualified doctor makes a wrong or delayed diagnosis of your cancer. This diagnostic error is bound to result in incorrect or delayed treatment, or even no treatment, either worsening your condition or even ending in untimely death.

However, it needs to be borne in mind also that a mere diagnostic mistake by itself does not constitute enough ground to sustain a lawsuit for medical malpractice because the law doesn't hold doctors responsible for all errors in diagnosis. Instead, as a patient, you have to prove 3 things to establish wrong diagnosis. These are:

· There was actually a doctor-patient relationship.

· The attending doctor in question was actually negligent. This implies that he failed to provide treatment reasonably skillfully and competently.

· The negligence on the doctor's part truly caused injury to you.

A misdiagnosis by itself does not imply negligence. The key lies in determining whether the physician or surgeon acted with full competence. This would require evaluating the full procedure adopted by the doctor at arriving at a final diagnosis - what differential diagnosis methods he used to arrive at a final conclusion.

As the patient, you need to prove that the doctor did not fully comply with the differential diagnosis list, which a reasonably competent and skillful physician would have under the same circumstances; and even though your doctor made a correct diagnosis based on the differential diagnosis list, he did not carry out appropriate tests or consult specialists to investigate the diagnosis's viability.

All cancer misdiagnosis claims are payable provided it's proved that your physician did not refer you to a specialist despite your symptoms; did not perform or advise a biopsy; clinically did not investigate your symptoms properly; or advise appropriate CT or MRI scans.

This assumes special significance in today's context as with early diagnosis, breast, cervical, prostate, and colon cancers can be fully curable. However, if you have missed the bus because of your physician's mistake or negligence causing your cancer to turn terminal, your physician is certainly guilty and needs to pay up.

Taking legal action

Should it be established that you are indeed an unfortunate victim of such negligence, you need to consult with a sagacious and tremendous medical diagnosis negligence lawyer or cancer malpractice attorney to ensure that justice is actually done.

At Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff LLP or RMFW Law, our team of cancer malpractice lawyers have successfully settled multimillion-dollar payouts on behalf of unfortunate cancer patients and also their surviving family members. Get in touch with us at 212-344-1000 for a free consultation. You have nothing to lose, the first meeting with us will cost you nothing!

You will be approached by the insurance company of the hospital. They will offer you a tantalizing offer but in reality that offer is a joke. It may only cover the hospital's mistakes, it will not cover the missed time at work, your personal setbacks, and so on. So why sell yourself short? Why take $28,000 when you could receive $96,000 three months later, for example?

You need RMFW Law on your side. We have been around the legal block before. Your odds of this case unfolding brightly for you increase mightily if you call us. We know how to win these types of cases and have medical experts who could possibly back up your claim.