Coordinating the care of a patient may actually make the difference between life and death. The involvement of more than one physicians in the treatment of a patient means that some doctors may have vital information that has to be communicated to the patient and to t he other physicians for necessary follow up. Without it the patient might go on lacking suitable and needed treatment. The importance of this kind of communication is not necessarily negated simply because the patient fails to go back to one of the physicians. Hence when a physician has information or reaches a judgment that the patient should have immediate follow up or treatment it is important for that physician to inform the patient and possibly also at least the patient's primary care physician.
Consider the following reported medical malpractice claim. Several physicians had a chance to diagnose the man's prostate cancer The man first consulted with his primary care physician, a general practitioner, with complaints of urinary problems at 56 years old age. The family doctor thought that the problems were not a result of cancer. Therefore, the doctor did not order any diagnostic testing, for example a biopsy and did not refer the man to a urologist.
The man, on his own, went to a urologist 10 months later. The urologist carried out a physical examination of the prostate and ordered a PSA blood test. As it turned out this urologist did not practice in the patient's insurance network and so the patient consulted with a different urologist. Although the blood test results came in neither the results of the test nor the first urologist's suspicion of cancer and advice that a biopsy be carried out were passed on to the individual's primary care physician or to his other urologist. The second urologist concluded that the examination of the prostate was normal and that there was no evidence of cancer.
As a result the cancer was not detected for two years by which point it had spread outside the prostate. By that point, the cancer had spread outside the prostate and had metastasized. Had the cancer been caught when the patient initially complained of urinary problems, when he saw the first urologist, or even when the second urologist failed to find any abnormalities with his prostate and failed to order a PSA test, it would not have yet spread and, with treatment, the patient could have had approximately 97% likelihood of surviving the cancer. Given that the cancer was already advanced at the time of diagnosis, however, the patient was likely to pass away from the cancer in fewer than five years. The law firm that helped the patient revealed that the resulting medical malpractice claim settled for $2.5 Million.
This claim thus shows 2 main varieties of failures. There was the failure on the part of the family doctor and the second urologist to not follow the proper screening guidelines. The other error was one in communication. This happened when there was a miscommunication of the findings, suspicions, and recommendations of the urologist who was not approved by the insurance company and the other doctors. If the patient had been able to keep seeing the unapproved urologist the patient would have known that cancer was a possibility and that a follow up biopsy was recommended. If the other physicians would have agreed with that recommendation or would have passed this information to the patient if they had received it is unknown but then the error would have been entirely theirs.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney focused on catastrophic injury and medical malpractice cases. To learn more about metastatic prostate cancer cases and how a cancer lawyer may be able to help you visit the website
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.massagebyben.com/articles/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites 