Medical Misdiagnosis
Attorney

Wrong Diagnosis Lawsuit in California and Nevada: What You Need to Know

Misdiagnosis can cause serious harm, sometimes resulting in permanent injury or even death. When a doctor incorrectly diagnoses a condition, the patient may face long-term health complications and require ongoing medical treatment.

In both California and Nevada, healthcare providers must meet a standard of care when diagnosing and treating patients. This means doctors have a legal and ethical duty to thoroughly evaluate symptoms and order appropriate tests before deciding on a diagnosis or treatment plan.

Unfortunately, misdiagnosis still occurs. Errors in diagnosis can lead to inappropriate or delayed treatment, worsening the patient’s condition. If you or a loved one has suffered harm due to a wrong diagnosis, you may have grounds to file a medical malpractice lawsuit in California or Nevada.

According to a Johns Hopkins study, more than 250,000 people die in the United States every year from a medical misdiagnosis. Medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death in the United States. Our attorneys believe that patients should not have to be victims of doctors’ negligence. Our team works diligently to make sure that victims receive financial compensation for their injuries. A misdiagnosis can results in severe injuries, even unpreventable harm. Our attorneys are available 24/7, and we hold free, no-risk consultations for you to discuss your claim. Contact us today to see if you have a viable medical malpractice claim.

How Does a Medical Misdiagnosis Occur?

Medical misdiagnosis happens when a healthcare provider incorrectly identifies a patient’s condition. This can lead to wrong treatments, delays, or even harm. Understanding how misdiagnoses occur helps patients recognize potential issues and take action.

Common Causes of Medical Misdiagnosis

From our experience with medical malpractice cases in California and Nevada, the following are the most frequent causes of misdiagnosis:

• Misreading Test Results: Doctors may fail to interpret lab reports, imaging, or other diagnostic tests correctly.
• Not Ordering the Right Tests: Sometimes the proper tests aren’t ordered, preventing accurate diagnosis.
• Inaccurate Patient Assessment: The doctor might miss important signs during physical exams or consultations.
• Misunderstanding Symptoms: Symptoms communicated by the patient may be overlooked or misunderstood.
• Ignoring Medical History: Failure to review or consider the patient’s past medical records can cause errors.

If you or a loved one has experienced medical negligence, don’t wait to get the legal help you deserve. Our experienced attorneys offer a free, no-risk consultation to review your case in detail.

During this consultation, we will thoroughly examine the facts and identify all possible defendants involved. We help determine who may be legally responsible for the harm caused and evaluate your case’s strength.

You’ll also receive a clear idea of the potential damages you could claim, giving you an informed outlook on your legal options.

Types of Medical Misdiagnosis

• Misdiagnosis (Wrong Diagnosis) – This type of medical malpractice occurs when a doctor examines a patient and determines that they have the wrong illness. This is especially problematic in cases such as heart attack or stroke where the threat to the patient’s life tends to be immediate. Misdiagnosis can lead to the prescribing of the wrong drugs, the wrong treatments, or the use of treatments that can worsen the patient’s condition. Because misdiagnosis causes the real illness to remain untreated, the consequences of such mistakes can lead to years of suffering, serious injuries, or even death for the patient. If a reasonable, competent doctor would have created a list with the correct diagnosis on it, then the doctor in question may have acted negligently if they failed to do so under the same circumstances.
• Delayed Diagnosis or Failure to Diagnosis in a Reasonable Amount of Time – The doctor fails to make the correct diagnosis right away, but eventually makes the right diagnosis of the illness. This is the most common type of diagnostic error in these medical malpractice cases. When it comes to treating time-critical illnesses such as heart attack, stroke, or cancer, a delay in diagnosis can directly lead to serious injury or death as a result.
• Missed Diagnosis – These types of misdiagnoses occur when there was no diagnosis made even though the patient was suffering from some sort of illness. The reason for missing the diagnosis is not always the doctor’s fault, and for cases where it is due to faulty equipment or bad data from a lab technician, the equipment manufacturer or the lab tech may be able to be held responsible instead.
• Failure to Diagnose Related or Unrelated Disease – In these cases, the doctor does make a correct diagnosis of the primary condition, but fails to diagnosis another disease that the patient is suffering from. A missed diagnosis can be considered to be negligent for a related disease if it has a high incidence of occurrence in patients with the primary disease. A missed diagnosis of an unrelated disease is not always considered to be negligence.
• Failure to Recognize Complications – The doctor correctly diagnoses the primary condition of the patient but fails to recognize the factors or complications which aggravate or worsen the illness.

Consequences of Medical Misdiagnosis: What You Need to Know

Medical misdiagnosis can have serious, sometimes life-altering consequences. When a healthcare professional fails to correctly identify your condition, it may result in one of the following:

• No treatment at all, leaving your illness untreated and potentially worsening.
• Unnecessary treatment, exposing you to risks and side effects without benefit.
• Incorrect treatment, which can cause further harm or delay proper care.

If you’ve experienced any of these outcomes, the impact can be devastating—physically, emotionally, and financially. You don’t have to face this alone.

Our team of experienced medical misdiagnosis attorneys is here to help. We believe no one should suffer because of a preventable error. Contact us today to determine your rights and explore your options.hould be a victim in any of these circumstances. Contact us today to determine how you could receive financial compensation for your injuries.

Commonly Misdiagnosed Diseases & Illnesses

These are some of the most commonly misdiagnosed medical conditions:

• Acute Myocardial Infarction (heart attack);
• Breast Cancer;
• Cervical cancer;
• Pulmonary Embolism;
• Diabetes;
• Meningitis;
• Testicular Cancer;
• Ovarian Cancer;
• Prostate Cancer;
• Stroke;
• Tuberculosis;
• Appendicitis.

Misdiagnosis in the medical field is more common than most believe. With many of the most common illnesses that are undiagnosed leading to serious injury or death, medical misdiagnosis costs the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans each year.

Injuries Caused by Medical Misdiagnosis: What You Need to Know

Medical misdiagnosis can lead to a wide range of serious injuries and health risks. Understanding these risks is crucial to protect yourself and seek proper care if you suspect an error in diagnosis.

Common injuries resulting from medical misdiagnosis include:

• Unnecessary surgery: Patients may undergo operations they don’t need, exposing them to pain, infection, and recovery complications.
• Increased risk of complications or death: A missed or wrong diagnosis can delay critical treatment, worsening the condition or leading to fatal outcomes.
• Harmful exposure to treatments: For example, receiving chemotherapy or radiation for a cancer diagnosis that turns out to be incorrect can cause significant, avoidable harm.
• Side effects from unnecessary medications: Taking drugs without needing them can cause unwanted side effects and harm your overall health.
• Risk of death: In severe cases, misdiagnosis directly contributes to preventable deaths.

Legal Elements for a Medical Misdiagnosis Lawsuit

When an attorney is representing you in a medical misdiagnosis lawsuit in California, there are certain elements that must be met. That’s why it is very important to hire an experienced and skilled medical malpractice attorney in order to be able to prove all these elements and determine liability. These three elements must be proven in a medical malpractice case to show that the doctor was responsible for the patient’s injury:

• There was a doctor-patient relationship that existed before the diagnosis.
• The doctor acted negligently in the sense that they did not provide treatment in a reasonably competent and skilled manner.
• The negligent actions of the doctor caused the patient to suffer injury.

The key is that the doctor must have acted negligently in some way that caused injury to the patient for it to be considered malpractice. In most cases, the second, the third, or a combination of the two elements is proven to create a winning case for the injured patient.

How to Prove Negligence in Misdiagnosis Cases

Proving negligence in misdiagnosis cases can be complex. Even if a patient suffers severe injuries, it’s essential to clearly establish that those injuries directly resulted from a doctor’s negligence. Without this proof, a medical malpractice claim will likely fail.

To demonstrate negligence, the patient must show that the doctor breached the standard of care during the diagnostic process. Common ways doctors can be negligent include:

• Failing to conduct proper diagnostic tests: The doctor did not order or perform the necessary tests to rule out other likely conditions before reaching a diagnosis.
• Omitting likely illnesses in the differential diagnosis: The doctor’s list of potential diagnoses did not include all reasonable possibilities that a competent physician would have considered under the same circumstances.
• Improperly conducting the differential diagnosis: The doctor did not adequately evaluate or analyze the patient’s symptoms and test results to reach an accurate diagnosis.

How Expert Witnesses Support Medical Negligence Cases

In medical malpractice cases, an expert witness often plays a critical role. They testify about how the doctor used differential diagnosis and whether this process was carried out correctly. Differential diagnosis is the method doctors use to identify a disease by ruling out other possible conditions.

The expert witness explains to the court whether the doctor followed the proper steps or missed key signs that should have led to the correct diagnosis.

Establishing Negligence and Proving Causation

Once negligence is established—that is, the doctor failed to meet the accepted medical standard—the next step for the patient’s legal team is to prove causation. This means showing that the misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis directly caused the patient’s injuries.

To do this, the legal team must demonstrate that if the correct diagnosis had been made, the patient’s injuries or suffering would likely have been avoided. This connection between negligence and harm is essential to win a malpractice claim.

What type of damages could I receive in my medical misdiagnosis case?

 Each medical misdiagnosis case has different facts that could determine the amount of damages. To get an idea as to how much you could potentially collect in damages, contact our attorneys today. Our experienced team of California and Nevada medical malpractice lawyers can help victims recover compensation for a variety of different damages they’ve suffered as a result. This can include compensation for:

• Physical damages
• Emotional suffering
• Hospital and medical bills
• Lost wages
• Losses in earning capacity
• Property damage
• Loss of consortium and affection
• Punitive damages: punitive damages depend on the state that you are located in. California and Nevada very rarely allow punitive damages. But, if you could show that the health care provider acted with malice, you could potentially receive punitive damages for a medical misdiagnosis.