Failure to refer and failure to diagnose

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When a doctor fails to refer or diagnose

For most patients suffering from illness, the first point of contact when seeking medical care will be their GP. A doctor might be deemed negligent if he or she fails to recognise that a patient needs to be referred to a specialist, usually via a hospital, for further tests and treatment.

GPs also have a duty of care to their patients to follow up on test results and information received from specialists and other healthcare practitioners, which, if not acted upon correctly can lead to worsening of conditions and severe consequences for the patient, particularly for cancer patients and those suffering from vascular conditions.

Failure to refer and referral errors

Claims in relation to referrals, cover several types of incident, including:

• If a GP fails to recognise that a patient needs to be referred to a specialist for tests or treatment – this can cause significant delays in the patient receiving the treatment they need.
• Administrative errors in relation to referrals – including patients getting lost in the system or a referral simply not being processed correctly by the GP surgery.
• Following up after hospital treatment – when a patient is discharged back into the care of their GP, it is the GP’s responsibility to monitor the patient’s recovery and refer them back to hospital for any follow up tests and treatment that might be required.
• If a referral error has occurred and this has led to you suffering harm, either due to delayed treatment or delayed diagnosis of your condition, your doctor may have been medically negligent. You will need to prove that other doctors, with the same skill-set and experience, would have treated you differently and referred you sooner or handled the referral differently.

Contact Wellers today to start your claim against a negligent GP or doctor. We offer a free, no-obligation initial meeting so that you can tell us about your circumstances and we can evaluate the likelihood of a successful medical negligence claim.

Failure to follow up or act upon test results

Medical testing is fundamental to a patient’s healthcare and most of us will at some point undergo medical testing following a visit to a GP. We then place our trust in the GP to follow up the test request or act upon the test results they receive.

The types of testing that a GP or doctor should follow up and act upon include:

• Blood test results
• Urine sample results
• Biopsy results
• X-ray images
• CT and MRI scan results

If your GP or a hospital doctor fails to follow up or act upon test results, and your condition worsens as a result, this may be adjudged to be an act of medical negligence.

Failure to act upon information

All healthcare professionals have a duty to care for patients and to act on information they receive from other healthcare professionals. If a GP, private doctor or hospital doctor receives information about a patient’s health and fails to act in an appropriate manner and this failure causes the patient to suffer harm then this is an act of medical negligence.

The types of information that GPs, doctors and consultants are required to scrutinise and act upon include:

• Medical history reports
• A & E triage assessments
• Ward nurse assessments
• Occupational health assessments
• District nursing and community care assessments
• Mental health assessments

If a doctor has failed to act upon information received about your health or failed to act appropriately and this has led to your condition worsening un-necessarily, or led to the death of a family member, then the doctor may have been medically negligent.

Failure to diagnose

If your condition, injury, or illness could and should have been diagnosed earlier, or if it was missed completely, it is your right as the patient, or the patient’s family, to make a claim for compensation.

Failure to diagnose can also occur in a trauma setting. For example, if a person attends hospital after a fall and hospital staff fail to organise the appropriate X-rays or scans, this could lead to the patient being discharged without treatment for potentially life-changing injuries.

What is delayed diagnosis?

Certain conditions and illnesses, for example, cancer, internal injury, and sepsis, need to be investigated and followed up quickly because delayed diagnosis can prove fatal or life-changing, and late diagnosis could prolong a patient’s recovery period or reduce their life expectancy.

If early diagnosis and treatment would have prevented the patient’s death or suffering, there may be a medical negligence case to be answered.

Reasons behind delayed and failed diagnoses

When a doctor, GP, or other clinician does not recognise or act upon the signs and symptoms of illnesses and conditions, these errors can cause severe implications for the patient.

The failures may come about as a result of:

• Clinical diagnostic errors – such as failure to take a full medical history, disregarding patient complaints, and failing to investigate patient symptoms.
• Pathology errors – such as incorrect handling and/or analysis of blood, tissue and urine samples or the misreading of results.
• Medical imaging errors – such as failing to scan the correct body part or the misreading of CT scans, X-rays, and MRI images.

Medical negligence

Medical negligence may occur if a patient suffering from an injury or condition makes repeated visits to a GP or hospital clinic to describe their symptoms but clinicians fail to diagnose the cause.

Medical negligence claims are complex and governed by strict time limits, so it’s important that you seek legal advice as soon as possible if you believe you have suffered as a result of a diagnosis failure or delay.