The faster a doctor in Maryland can accurately diagnose a medical condition, the more likely a patient is to get the medical treatment he or she needs to recover from the illness as quickly as possible. Failure to diagnose a patient, on the other hand, may cause a person to suffer long-term physical harm or even lose his or her life prematurely. One woman in another state was recently awarded damages in a case in which a doctor did not diagnose her properly.
In this out-of-state case, the woman said she underwent vaginal exams each year between 2008 and 2011. The woman, 63, complained that she was having pain, but her test results continued to come back negative. However, the woman's attorney said the technician did not correctly read the slides yielding the results.
The woman had reportedly had cancer since 2008, and, by 2011, the disease had progressed to stage 3. The woman, whose disease is currently in remission, was awarded more than $7 million in damages following a jury ruling that the technician did not identify her cancer of the cervix. This award includes 2 million additional dollars for the woman's husband.
Residents of Maryland can find comfort in the fact that when a medical professional's failure to diagnose causes a person to suffer an illness or die unnecessarily, that medical professional may be held liable. Any victim of a medical professional's negligence has the right to file a civil suit. A monetary award may help the victim to cover medical costs and other losses stemming from the documented incident of medical malpractice, such as loss of wages.
