Diagnosing a Broken System
By most accounts, the U.S. health care system isn't working very well. Costs are staggering. Tens of millions are uninsured. Facilities are understaffed. Physicians and other providers are constantly being asked to do more with less. Patients often receive just a few minutes of their doctor's time — if they ever actually see a doctor at all.
For these reasons and others, incidents of delayed cancer diagnosis are on the rise.
At Powers & Santola, we handle delayed cancer diagnosis lawsuits for individuals and families here in New York State, and for people in every U.S. state that permits this type of medical malpractice claim. If the reasons you've been given for your illness don't seem to make sense, you might be right. The real cause might have been the doctor's own negligence or the shortcomings of the system itself.
Whatever the cause, the harm you've suffered as a result is real and may be legally compensable. To speak with one of our attorneys about a potential delayed diagnosis of cancer lawsuit, call us toll free from anywhere in the U.S. at 866.733.2326 or contact us online.
Common Delayed Diagnosis Causes
(This is not an all-inclusive list of causes for the delayed diagnosis of cancer.)
- Initial physical examinations don't always reveal cancer. However, this does not give the doctor cause to ignore or minimize your complaints.
- Pressed for time, doctors sometimes find it easier to assume your complaints have a "benign" cause. For example, they might attribute rectal bleeding to hemorrhoids or hoarseness or cough to an upper respiratory tract infection when your symptoms warrant further investigation.
- Treating the symptom as the disease (e.g., treating anemia as the whole problem rather than exploring the possibility that the anemia is being caused by something else).
- Relying on a less than definitive means of diagnosis such as a mammogram for breast cancer when in fact, a definitive diagnosis can only be made with a biopsy.
- A substantial percentage of chest x-rays, mammograms, PAP smears and similar tests are interpreted incorrectly each year. At the same time, accepting a negative test result as correct without following up to determine the actual cause of the condition is an unacceptable practice.
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