How Delayed Diagnosis Can Affect Your Outcome

Before a patient can receive crucial treatment for an illness or injury, the medical provider must first make a prompt, accurate diagnosis of the patient’s condition. Sadly, a study of critically ill patients from medical facilities across the country revealed that nearly 25% of respondents experienced a delay in the diagnosis of their illness. Three-quarters of patients in the study suffered harm from the delayed diagnosis, including death in one out of 15 patients.

When doctors fail to order appropriate tests, miss key indicators, or make an initial misdiagnosis, delays in reaching a correct diagnosis result in missed opportunities for potentially life-saving treatment.

What Causes Delayed Diagnosis?

When a person experiences symptoms of an illness or develops signs of an injury after an accident, they place their trust in their medical professionals to accurately assess them, order the correct diagnostic tests, and make a prompt, accurate diagnosis to apply the correct course of treatment. Unfortunately, delayed diagnoses are more common than most people suspect and are often caused by the following negligent actions by medical providers:

• Failure to accurately recognize symptoms
• Incomplete patient assessments
• Failure to obtain a complete medical history
• Neglecting to order the appropriate diagnostic tests
• Inaccurately reading or interpreting test results
• Failure to refer a patient to an appropriate specialist
• Communication failures, such as neglecting to transfer complete patient records between facilities
• Lab errors

When a medical error, oversight, or negligence results in a delayed diagnosis, it’s medical malpractice. If the malpractice results in a worsened medical outcome, the patient or their surviving family member has the right to demand financial accountability through a medical malpractice claim against the negligent provider.

Potential Outcomes of Delayed Diagnosis

Sometimes a delayed diagnosis only results in a temporarily prolonged illness without permanent harm. Still, in other cases, the failure to promptly diagnose and treat a medical condition leads to adverse outcomes. For example, the delayed diagnosis of cancer results in disease progression.

The potential outcomes of delayed diagnosis include the following:

• A medical condition that has progressed to the point that it requires more aggressive treatment, such as more invasive surgeries, chemotherapy, and more potent medications with adverse side effects
• Disease progression, such as cancer metastasis, the spread of infection, or sepsis
• Prolonged pain and suffering
• Permanent harm, including catastrophic injury, such as medically necessary amputations, organ damage, disability, diminished quality of life, and shortened life expectancy

In the worst cases, a delayed diagnosis results in the wrongful death of a patient. For example, stage one cancers are almost always curable. When a patient with stage one cancer experiences a delayed diagnosis, the cancer may progress to incurable, stage four disease, resulting in terminal illness and death. 

Filing a Medical Malpractice Claim for Delayed Diagnosis

When a delayed diagnosis of an illness or injury causes physical, emotional, and economic damages to a patient, it’s a breach of the medical provider’s legal duty to treat the patient with the level of care accepted as standard by the medical community. This is medical malpractice, leaving the provider liable for damages.

A personal injury claim is rarely easy, but medical malpractice claims are uniquely challenging, as they rely on critical evidence from the patient’s medical records, doctors’ notes, and eyewitness testimony. Our medical malpractice attorneys in Chicago have the skills, knowledge, and resources to make strong cases supporting an injury victim’s right to compensation.

A successful medical malpractice claim for delayed diagnosis can result in compensation for the patient’s additional medical expenses, lost earnings, pain, suffering, and catastrophic injury. Wrongful death benefits may be available to the closest surviving family member of a deceased victim of a delayed diagnosis.