Patients trust their doctors and other healthcare providers to take their symptoms seriously and exercise care and skill when diagnosing a potential medical issue or problem. In Canada, the standard of care requires all doctors to take reasonable steps to arrive at the proper diagnosis. Unfortunately, when mistakes are made and care is not taken, a diagnosis can be missed with very serious consequences.
For many conditions, including many conditions that form the subject of a medical malpractice claim, a patient’s prognosis is directly tied to the timing of the diagnosis. In other words, for a great many medical issues, the earlier diagnosis is made the better. This is not to say that the law requires perfection from doctors and nurses, but there may be a claim in medical malpractice if a healthcare provider does not take adequate steps to carefully consider a patient’s condition or order appropriate tests to determine whether a serious problem may be present.
The Importance of Timely Diagnosis in Medical Malpractice Cases
Medical malpractice cases brought because of a delayed or missed diagnosis often involve the notion of a lost opportunity. If the right diagnosis was made earlier, the patient would have been afforded a better opportunity to be cured or avoid a particularly difficult clinical course. The notion of a missed opportunity is important to understand because the loss of an opportunity alone does not give rise to compensation through a claim in medical malpractice.
To be successful in an action brought because of a delayed or missed diagnosis, a plaintiff (the person who brings the legal action) also needs to prove that earlier detection of the disease or condition likely would have changed the outcome. This can be frustrating because Canadian Courts will not award damages even if a delayed diagnosis may have contributed to a bad outcome that could have been avoided; instead, to succeed, it must be provable that the delay more likely than not caused the harm for which the legal action is brought.
Navigating the Legal Complexities of Causation and Negligence
This issue is referred to legally as the issue of “causation.” This is one reason why advice from an experienced medical malpractice lawyer is so important when contemplating an action in medical negligence. The lawyers at BIMMA ensure we take a thorough and impartial approach to assessing whether a claim is likely to be successful, and this process is especially important in the context of an allegedly delayed diagnosis. Before commencing a legal action involving a missed diagnosis, it is important to understand whether it is likely that the issue of causation can be addressed. In other words, legal advice on whether you can likely prove that the delayed diagnosis more than likely caused serious harm and altered the outcome is an important step in understanding your legal rights.
Delayed diagnosis cases can also be nuanced because a legal claim must parse out, or separate, the impacts of the condition that should have been diagnosed and the impacts of its delayed detection. Only the latter can be subject to a successful legal action. This nuance adds difficulty because every plaintiff in a delayed diagnosis case already has a condition that is not attributable to negligence; the goal is to prove that timely diagnosis and treatment would have prevented all serious consequences. Where that can be established, usually through evidence from expert medical witnesses, then a claim is likely to be successful – so long as it can also be shown that the missed diagnosis was more than an innocent error of judgment.
It may be surprising to learn that the fact of a doctor missing a diagnosis is not necessarily enough for a medical malpractice claim to be successful. Doctors are not judged by a standard of perfection and an experienced medical malpractice lawyer will be able to explain how legal standards may affect the likelihood of success in a negligence action when a doctor fails to adequately diagnose your condition.
In many cases where an incorrect diagnosis was received, Courts will consider what steps were taken by the doctor before arriving at a diagnosis. It may be relevant to consider whether reasonable amounts of testing were ordered or whether certain symptoms were relayed by the patient accurately. To be successful, a patient who suffered damages from a delayed diagnosis must prove that the doctor was unreasonable in failing to query or rule out a serious condition that was underlying their symptoms.
In contrast, the patient will not be successful in medical malpractice claim if the Court is persuaded that the diagnosis was wrong but reasonable. Sometimes this is the result when the doctor performed the required examinations, ordered any required tests, and came to a diagnosis that was reasonable under the circumstances. The rarer the underlying condition, the easier it may be for a doctor to defend the medical malpractice claim. However, our Courts also recognize that serious, time-sensitive conditions – including rare ones – should be considered and ruled out where appropriate.
Ultimately, if you have suffered harm as the result of a delayed diagnosis, it is important to speak with a medical malpractice lawyer. The lawyers at BIMMA have significant experience advancing claims for people who have suffered serious harm resulting from a missed diagnosis, and we are available for a free consultation to review the facts of your case and provide an independent opinion on the strength of a potential case.
