Failure to Order Testing Lawyer in Massachusetts

Failure to Order Testing as Medical Malpractice

A physician who sees a patient with symptoms, risk factors, or clinical findings that should prompt diagnostic testing, but who fails to order that testing, may be departing from the standard of care. Diagnostic testing is the mechanism by which serious conditions are identified at stages when treatment is most effective. When a physician’s failure to order appropriate testing allows a condition to progress undetected, the resulting harm may be legally compensable as medical malpractice. Attorney Jeffrey C. Lavey represents patients harmed by testing failures throughout Massachusetts.

Common Testing Failures That Cause Harm

• Failure to order cancer screening tests for patients with classic risk factors
• Failure to order an ECG for a patient presenting with chest pain, shortness of breath, or cardiac risk factors
• Failure to order a CT scan or MRI when neurological symptoms suggest stroke or intracranial pathology
• Failure to order a D-dimer or CT pulmonary angiogram for a patient with signs of pulmonary embolism
• Failure to order blood cultures for a febrile patient with signs of systemic infection
• Failure to order imaging for a patient with significant pain and mechanism of injury suggesting fracture
• Failure to biopsy a suspicious lesion that meets criteria for tissue sampling

The Standard of Care for Diagnostic Testing

The standard of care for diagnostic testing is determined by what a reasonably competent physician in the same specialty would have ordered given the specific clinical presentation. Evidence-based guidelines from specialty societies establish what testing is appropriate for particular presentations. When a physician departs from these guidelines without a documented clinical reason, and the departure allows a serious condition to go undetected, the departure may constitute malpractice. Attorney Lavey evaluates testing decisions against the applicable standard in every failure to order testing case.

The Harm From Testing Delays

When appropriate testing is not ordered, conditions progress untreated. Cancer advances through stages. Cardiac muscle dies. Infections reach sepsis. Blood clots fragment and cause pulmonary emboli. Each of these progressions causes harm that would not have occurred if the condition had been detected at the point when testing should have been ordered. The expert testimony in a failure to order testing case establishes both that the testing should have been ordered and what earlier detection would have meant for the patient’s outcome.

Compensation Available

Compensation in failure to order testing malpractice cases covers all additional treatment costs caused by the progression of the undetected condition during the period when testing should have been ordered, all lost wages during additional treatment, pain and suffering from the worsened condition, and future medical costs if the condition required more aggressive treatment than it would have needed with earlier detection. Attorney Lavey pursues every element of these damages in every failure to order testing case.

Frequently Asked Questions