Have you been misdiagnosed? An Insight in to the hurdles of claiming

If you have been misdiagnosed – whether you have been told an incorrect diagnosis or you have not been diagnosed properly – you may have a claim for personal injury compensation.

That being said, if you have been misdiagnosed, you are not automatically entitled to compensation. We must prove that the misdiagnosis has been caused by a failure to properly investigate your symptoms or refer you to a professional in the right field if necessary. Here’s some more info on how it works.

Proving Failure – the hard part!

We must be able to show, with evidence, that there was enough information and knowledge available to a medical professional, such as your GP, to be able to make the correct diagnosis or refer you to someone who may be able to help you. Evidencing this is normally done through medical records.

If your records show clearly what symptoms you described yet you were misdiagnosed, that can be evidence for the claim. We can instruct our own private medical expert to examine you and review the notes and conclude whether they believe in their professional opinion that, based on the information in your records and your account, an accurate diagnosis or referral could and should have been made.

This isn’t easy for several reasons:

1. Your records may not accurately reflect your symptoms or the extent of the symptoms
2. Your symptoms recorded may not necessarily point toward an obvious diagnosis
3. It may have been too early to confirm a diagnosis when you had your initial visit

The above are some examples – but it doesn’t just stop there, because you should always be correctly advised about whether you need to see someone else or return for further investigation after a period of waiting. The main hurdle here is showing that something could have been picked up at an earlier stage which can be very hard to do. Some symptoms are too wide at the outset to pinpoint the underlying cause.

Of course, if you are simply turned away and told there is nothing to be worried about, and then later on things get worse and you end up with a serious problem, there could be negligence. But it depends on the advice given – if you are informed to return if symptoms get worse, you should.

Proving that you have suffered – almost as hard

If we can prove that you have been misdiagnosed, we now need to show that this misdiagnosis has caused you to suffer. This could be if:

1. The delay in correctly diagnosing you has worsened your symptoms
2. The delay has caused undue suffering which could have been prevented with an earlier diagnosis
3. Complications arise due to not being treated quickly enough

The suffering also needs to be substantial enough for us to be able to make a claim for you. For us to be able to recover our legal fees from the opponent, the claim has to be worth in excess of £1,000. Judging this from the outset isn’t always easy, but we can roughly say that if you have suffered for a minimum of four to six weeks or so, the claim should be worth more than that.

That isn’t a hard and fast rule – if you suffered for only two weeks, but you were in immense pain and perhaps hospitalised, well that’s more serious and could warrant it being over £1,000. But the issue here is that the misdiagnosis and its consequences must be severe enough or we will struggle to be able to help you.

What should I do?

To assess whether you many have a claim for personal injury compensation for a misdiagnosis, whether from a GP, hospital, or other health expert, call our free claims helpline on 0800 634 75 75 and we will try and advise. We employ specialist solicitors and trained staff with extensive experience in helping victims of medical negligence claims so we should be able to advise you.

We are a firm of specialist personal injury lawyers, so we’re best placed to fight for your claim. We can also offer 100% compensation agreements for many clients as well.