The Dangerous Consequences of Diagnostic Errors in Health Care

While not even doctors can be infallible, we still look to them to always have the right answers and to provide the perfect cure when we are sick. Sometimes, despite their best efforts, doctors make mistakes in diagnosing a disease or ailment, and sometimes those mistakes are honest ones and other times they are a result of negligence.  As highly-paid and experienced professionals, physicians owe a duty of care to their patients to use their training, instincts and the diagnostic tools available to come up with an accurate diagnosis of their patients. Our civil justice system provides a remedy for patients who have suffered harm because of medical negligence including diagnostic errors.

According to a major medical malpractice insurer, diagnostic errors account for about 31% of the payout amounts for medical negligence and the District of Columbia had a total payout amount of $9,248,000 or about $13.76 per capita in 2016. Dr. David E. Newman-Toker said, in an article in Johns Hopkins Medicine, “This is more evidence that diagnostic errors could easily be the biggest patient safety and medical malpractice problem in the United States,” referring to a study that revealed diagnostic errors to cause the most severe patient harm and the highest penalty payouts.

In another medical malpractice analysis conducted by an insurer, about 36% of the claims they considered were related to some form of diagnostic error including:

• Failure to diagnose
• Misdiagnosis
• Delayed diagnosis

Diagnostic errors can be defined as a diagnosis that is missed, wrong or delayed as detected by some subsequent definitive test or finding, per Johns Hopkins Medicine. A diagnostic error is not the same thing as a misdiagnosis.  Failure to diagnose, according to Dr. Newman-Toker’s study, was the most frequent diagnostic error (54.2%), delayed diagnosis was next at 19.9% and wrong diagnosis was 9.9% with the remaining 16% as unclassified.

Is it medical malpractice?

The general standard used to determine whether a medical mistake rises to the level of malpractice includes the following elements:

1. Was there a doctor-patient relationship?
2. The doctor’s mistake breached the accepted standard of care (negligence)
3. The doctor’s breach caused injury or harm or other losses

In the case of a diagnostic error, if a physician sees a patient and diagnoses them with constipation when they actually had intestinal cancer that goes untreated and spreads, that could be considered a negligent, diagnostic error. If the cancer was aggressive and advanced to a stage where the patient’s health was diminished because it was not being treated, the patient suffered an injury.  If the patient were to hire a medical expert to review her case, and they can see where the doctor’s actions or failure to act deviated from the accepted standard of care, they might be called upon to testify if the case is brought to court.

In other diagnostic error cases, a physician might diagnose a patient with a disease that they do not have, treat them for the non-existent disease and the treatment might cause significant harm to the patient’s health. If the patient suffers injury or harm because of an aggressive treatment for a disease that they don’t have, this could be considered negligence and grounds for a medical malpractice lawsuit.

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