Doctors are only human and therefore, do make mistakes. But for the most part, we hear about the active mistakes like surgery mishaps. But doctors can do harm even indirectly, even by missing diagnoses of serious illnesses, like cancer. The longer a patient goes without treatment, the lower the chances of recovery. If a medical professional misses a diagnosis and a patient is harmed as a result, it would be in the patient’s best interest to speak to a New York Failure to Diagnose Cancer Lawyer to understand his or her rights regarding a malpractice suit.
According to a recent study these misdiagnosis are not uncommon and are causing enormous amounts of harm to patients. The results came out of Johns Hopkins University and studied over a quarter million malpractice claims filed over the past 25 years. Of these claims, researchers discovered that diagnostic errors accounted for the biggest portions of payments at 32.5%. This added up to almost $40 billion over 25 years. Sadly, almost half of the diagnostic error claims led to death of the patient.
In the U.S., the diagnostic mistakes can harm up to 160,000 people per year, meaning through injury or death. The scary study results point to a dire need for change but the change will not likely come overnight. Costs and expenses often contribute to misdiagnoses. In order to be more accurate, professionals can run more tests but this also ups the cost to patients. More tests also mean a great probably of false positive, often frightening patients unnecessarily.
While doctors report on certain procedures and outcomes, the diagnostic errors aren’t reported and therefore aren’t being monitored. Because of the nature of the error, patients may not even know that malpractice was committed until it is too late. But there is incentive on both the side of the medical community and consumers to bring attention to the issue of failure to diagnose. Doctor’s don’t want to continue incurring medical malpractice costs and patients want to feel confident that they are receiving the most accurate information and thorough care.
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The cost of diagnostic errors is great
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Jay W. Dankner
JAY W. DANKNER was born, raised and educated in Brooklyn, New York. After graduation from law school in 1973, he joined the firm of the legendary, Harry H, Lipsig, under whose tutelage he learned the intricacies of civil litigation and trials. He tried and won his first case against General Motors in a case involving a design defect within weeks after his admission. Thereafter, he focused his attention on the emerging and developing field of law known as products liability litigation.
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