Delayed Treatment Claims Solicitors

There are many circumstances that can result in someone waiting longer for medical treatment, from hospital waiting times to healthcare professionals failing to identify a patient’s symptoms.

However, in order to be considered a negligent delay:

1. The delay must be due to a healthcare professional breaching their duty of care.

2. The delay must be significant.

3. The injuries the claimant endured must be directly caused by the delay.

If a delay of treatment is due to mistakes by a healthcare professional – mistakes that no reasonable professional in their position would have made – then this would be considered a breach of their duty of care.

A significant delay is one that leads to a change in a patient’s condition, prognosis or treatment options. If no harm comes to the patient in the time between when their treatment should have started and when it actually started, then the delay is not considered significant.

For example, if a doctor fails to diagnose a patient’s breast cancer, but the patient then has this identified by another doctor two weeks later, it is unlikely that the patient’s disease would have progressed enough to alter their prognosis or treatment. This means a delayed diagnosis or a delayed treatment claim would be unsuccessful.

Conversely, if the patient did not have their condition diagnosed until a year later, this treatment delay may have significantly changed what treatment was available to them, and their long-term prognosis. This would make the delay significant, and the patient may be entitled to compensation.

One of the common reasons why someone would experience a delay in diagnosis or treatment is because their medical condition has been misdiagnosed. This then leads to a delay in referral to specialists, which then impacts subsequent treatment options.

Sometimes, this will mean a patient has to undergo prolonged or more invasive treatment than they would have if their diagnosis was made earlier. They may become disabled or disfigured as a result of this treatment, which could have also been avoided.

In the worst cases, patients may succumb to a disease that could have been cured if it had been diagnosed earlier. In the case of Mr T, he was prescribed a five-day course of amoxicillin by his GP after complaining of breathlessness and a cough.

When his condition did not improve, Mr T was admitted to A&E, where it was discovered he had severe coronary heart disease. Although he was listed for a coronary artery bypass graft, he became unwell a week later and passed away following a cardiac arrest.

As mentioned above, to have a strong case for a delayed treatment compensation claim, a medical negligence team must be able to prove that a healthcare professional breached their duty of care towards a claimant, and that the claimant’s condition, prognosis or treatment options changed as a result.

There are circumstances where a delay of treatment is justifiable, even if a patient’s condition consequently worsens. One of the most notable relates to differential diagnoses, where there are multiple different causes for a patient’s ill health.

Imagine that following diagnosis, a patient is deemed to have one of three conditions:

1. A fast-moving, potentially fatal disease

2. A progressive condition

3. A benign condition that does not require treatment

A healthcare professional will prioritise the first option, as it presents the most immediate risk. Should further tests rule this out, they would then proceed to the next possible condition.

In this scenario, if the patient did have the second condition, it may have progressed while the testing was conducted for the first condition. However, if a healthcare professional has a solid rationale for delaying this medical treatment, there are no grounds for a medical negligence claim.

Contrarily, if a healthcare professional started with the second condition, when in fact the patient was suffering from the first condition, this could be considered negligent as they did not prioritise their diagnoses correctly.

Like all medical negligence claims, a claimant has a three-year time limit from when an injury is realised to make a delayed treatment claim. There are exceptions to this rule – claimants under the age of 18 have until their 21st birthday to make a claim, while there is no time limit for those who are mentally incapacitated.

However, this does not necessarily mean three years after the negligent act occurred. It may be several months or years after this before a person recognises that something is wrong with them.

In these circumstances, date of knowledge ensures that someone can still make a claim. Here, the three-year time limit begins when a claimant should have reasonably suspected that something was wrong, rather than when the act of negligence happened.

Furthermore, every medical negligence claim is at the discretion of the Court, meaning it is possible for a claim to proceed even if the time limit has expired. Get in touch with our medical negligence experts for a free initial consultation and we will advise you on whether or not you have a viable claim.