When you to go to your Georgia doctor, you trust that he or she will provide you with quality care and help you understand the problem. You assume that you will get the right diagnosis and leave with a treatment plan that will help you get better. Unfortunately, this does not happen when a doctor does not give the right diagnosis.
Failure to diagnose can lead to serious health problems for a patient. It is crucial for a doctor to take all of the appropriate steps to figure out what is going on. Whether it’s through running certain tests or just listening carefully to a patient’s concerns, a medical professional should meet a certain standard of care. Failure to do to this or giving the wrong diagnosis could be medical malpractice.
The serious nature of a delayed or wrong diagnosis
If you did not get the right diagnosis from your doctor, this is a serious threat to your health. It could lead to the progression of your disease, a worsening of your condition and more pain. One of the ways that a doctor can get to the right answer is by doing a differential diagnosis. This means making a list of possible diagnoses according to symptoms. By comparing possibilities and looking at symptoms, this process allows doctors to arrive at the most probable diagnosis.
Doctors are not perfect, and they will not be correct every time. One of the key questions in determining whether a misdiagnosis qualifies as malpractice is whether a doctor acted reasonably and prudently when treating the patient. If you have evidence that the doctor acted negligently or did not take your concerns seriously, you could have grounds for a malpractice claim.
The wrong treatment plan
There are times where a doctor may arrive at the correct diagnosis yet fail to provide the right treatment plan. Every patient and medical concern is unique, and a doctor should strive to match the right treatment plan with the individual patient.
Doctors can’t guarantee the outcome of a medical case. However, they should strive to treat each patient with care and respect. Failure to provide care that meets certain standards is unacceptable, and it could result in patient harm and a worsening of your medical problem. If you believe you are the victim of medical malpractice, you may find it beneficial to seek an evaluation of your case and determine what legal options could be available to you.