Texas has numerous laws that can restrict medical malpractice cases. That situation leaves many victims of medical malpractice wondering what they can and can’t do when it comes to legal action. If a medical professional failed to diagnose cancer and that cancer continued to impact your life, then you should be able to take some action.
The question of whether you can legally take action against these doctors is present because of so many people taking out frivolous lawsuits against doctors and hospitals. You will need an experienced personal injury attorney that practices in Houston.
Differences Between Failed Diagnosis, Delayed Diagnosis, and Misdiagnosis
There are three keywords or phrasing that come into play during medical malpractice cases. First, a doctor can fail to diagnose you, which is our focus here. But, failed diagnosis is often confused with delayed diagnosis and misdiagnosis.
Misdiagnosis is when a doctor is incorrect about your illness or condition. Taking some kind of action means that they weren’t knowingly negligent. In essence, they did not fail to diagnose you with cancer. They simply diagnosed you with something else believing that they were right.
Delayed diagnosis is often a copout for doctors who really did fail their patients. In these situations, The doctor did not make any diagnosis initially. Simply sending someone home saying, you’re probably fine is the foundation of a delayed diagnosis. Then that doctor comes back later, or when you follow up with them and says, “actually, let’s see if something is wrong.”
The failure to diagnose means that the doctor did not make any diagnosis at all. It is grounds for medical malpractice because it was negligent and that failure to diagnose likely caused you a fair amount of injury as cancer is progressive and often aggressive.
What Do You Have To Prove Your Doctor Failed to Diagnose Cancer?
There are three key that you need to prove with your medical malpractice case. You need to show that you had a doctor-patient relationship. Usually, a judge will want to see more than just the one introductory appointment.
Usually, before a diagnosis, especially for cancer, a patient will know that something is happening but not sure what. It’s important that you showcase that you didn’t go into a new doctor for a one-time consultation.
Then you need to prove that the doctor was negligent, which is where many people struggle. To prove that the cancer was definitely there before your interaction with that doctor and then a different doctor found it is challenging.
Finally, you must prove that the negligence caused your injury. Maybe it led to your cancer progressing or spreading, and usually, the only indicator for that is time. An expert may be necessary to backtrack the possible development of your cancer to identify how far it spread or how much it progressed as a result of the failure to diagnose.
Which Type of Lawyer is Right for Me?
Taking your first step toward legal action means you need to find yourself a medical malpractice attorney. Medical malpractice is a niche within the personal injury law umbrella. Personal injury covers everything that could possibly result in harm to yourself. With medical malpractice, it’s specific to holding a member of the medical community responsible.
That overlap of a medical professional being responsible for an injury ties together the medical community, laws about care, and personal injury law. It also creates a complex blanket understanding of negligence. What is negligence to one doctor may not seem negligent to another. Ultimately, it’s not for either of them to decide that. In fact, an attorney can fight for an interpretation of “negligence” only to have a judge decide the other way.
Finding a lawyer that specializes in medical malpractice is absolutely critical when attempting to prove that your doctor failed to diagnose cancer.
Contact a Houston Personal Injury Attorney if Your Doctor Failed to Diagnose Cancer
While you’re looking for a personal injury law firm in Texas, you’ll need to know how to narrow down your options. Without a doubt, you’ve run into ads for personal injury attorneys on the radio, TV, and over the internet. But, finding the right one is hard, and it can be really confusing to know where to start.
Reach out to McDonald Worley in Houston to learn if we’re the right fit for you. You can sit down with a skilled lawyer with experience handling medical malpractice and similar cases. Schedule your consultation today.