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Can you sue a doctor for a delayed diagnosis?

On Behalf of | Mar 12, 2021 | Medical Malpractice

Some diseases get worse over time, and symptoms that weren’t present before can manifest themselves weeks or even years after the original diagnosis. If you get a diagnosis in time, you can often prevent your condition from getting worse. But if your doctor fails to diagnose you properly, you can suffer pain and incur medical expenses that could have been avoided.

In these situations, you may wonder if you would likely win a medical malpractice lawsuit against your doctor. The answer is that it depends upon a number of factors.

Professional standards for doctors

If a physician is acting with the normal care expected of someone in their profession, and making the same decisions that most other doctors in their situation would make, then they will most likely win any suit you bring against them.

In order to win a malpractice lawsuit against a doctor, your attorney will have to show that the doctor acted unreasonably for a medical professional. What that means for a diagnosis is that your doctor must have missed a diagnosis that a reasonable doctor would have seen.

If your attorney can prove that the doctor’s failure to properly diagnose you in time was the result of carelessness or a deviation from professional standards, then you stand a good chance of winning your suit against them.

It’s important to note that a failure to diagnose a disease doesn’t always mean that the doctor was negligent. Certain diseases can be extremely hard to notice in the early stages even for the best of doctors. A doctor only commits malpractice if they fail to see signs of a disease that a normal doctor would definitely see.

Hearing that your disease is progressing to late stages is some of the worst news that a person can receive. If you are able to win a medical malpractice suit, it can help to bring some much-needed relief to you and to your family members.