As a physician, you may try everything to help your patients get healthier. But sometimes, you may have to do the difficult thing of watching their medical condition progress to a life-altering, life-threatening, or life-ending status, for reasons beyond your control. Since a patient may be frustrated that they are only feeling worse and worse, they will likely attempt to direct their anger toward another party. With this, they may wrongfully blame you for delaying their diagnosis and subsequently making their condition incurable. If this happens to you, then please read on to discover whether you can be accused of medical misconduct for a delayed diagnosis and how one of the seasoned New York physician defense lawyers at Walker Medical Law can help you defend against this detrimental claim.
Can I be accused of medical misconduct for a delayed diagnosis?
A delayed diagnosis is, in fact, considered a form of medical misconduct. So your patient may make an argument for such by claiming the following circumstances to be true:
- Your patient may claim that you owed them a duty of care since you served as their treating physician.
- Your patient may claim that you breached your duty of care by failing to diagnose their medical condition on time.
- Your patient may claim that their health was directly threatened in a way that would not have happened if it were not for your delayed diagnosis.
- Your patient may claim that your delayed diagnosis further caused them to incur more expensive medical bills, exasperated physical pain and emotional suffering, etc.
What defense can I take against this harmful accusation?
After a delayed diagnosis accusation, you must build a compelling defense to present to the New York State Department of Health’s Office of Medical Conduct (OPMC) board; the Office of Professional Discipline (OPD) board; or the judge and jury of a medical malpractice civil lawsuit. There are several ways you may go about this.
For one, you may argue that your patient did not diligently follow the treatment plan you set up for them, which caused you to diagnose their medical condition later than you would have preferred. This may require you to provide records of their missed appointments with you. Plus, the specialists whom you referred them to for further testing may testify that they never scheduled an appointment with them, either.
Secondly, you may claim that another healthcare provider may have caused a delayed diagnosis instead of you. This may apply if lab technicians made errors with the medical testing you sent your patient to, and you subsequently had incorrect results to base your diagnoses off of. Or, if a nurse practitioner poorly relayed information regarding your patient’s expressed symptoms and concerns. This may have you produce copies of these medical testing results conducted by lab technicians and the patient’s chart filled out by the nurse practitioners.
If you require legal representation, look no further than one of the competent New York physician defense lawyers. The client testimonials on our website speak for themselves, saying that you will not regret hiring the team at Walker Medical Law.
