Full Answer
What is a delay in medical treatment?
Generally, a delay in medical treatment is because the doctor or other medical professionals are unaware of what the true condition is with the patient. The symptoms may appear as one of several illnesses or injuries.
What should I do if my insurance claim is delayed?
If you’re waiting on a delayed insurance claim payout, it’s important that you take notes of all phone conversations and interactions with the insurance company, including the: Names of the people with whom you spoke; and A description of what was discussed. In the insurance world, documentation is king.
Why are delays in NHS services so common?
Delays in services and treatments are prevalent across the NHS. Waiting times in A&E, for GP appointments, treatment waiting lists and access to mental health services are all getting longer. The figures on staff numbers and hospital beds go someway to explaining the current situation. The UK has only 2.7 beds per 1,000 of the population.
Are patients generally thought to be disadvantaged more likely to delay care?
After controlling for diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) and severity, patients who reported delays had 9% longer hospital stays compared with others (P less than 0.001). Conclusions: Patients generally thought to be disadvantaged are at especially high risk for delaying care for conditions that eventually lead to hospitalization.
What is delay in treatment?
A delay in treatment is characterized by a patient failing to receive medical treatment, whether it be medication, physical therapy treatment, lab testing, or any other form of treatment, within the reasonable time frame that it should have been delivered. This includes failing to receive an initial or follow-up appointment in a timely manner, ...
What are some examples of delays in treatment?
In other words, for a successful case to be built, the doctor must not have only delayed treatment, but the delay must have caused harm or additional injury to the patient. Examples of additional harms that the delay in treatment may have caused are: Worsening of condition. Worsening of symptoms associated with condition.
Why is it unreasonable to delay a diagnosis?
A patient should always receive effective care in the timeliest manner possible, as failure to quickly treat an illness could result in the worsening of a condition. However, according to a report by the Institute of Medicine, most Americans will receive a delayed diagnosis or treatment ...
How to have a successful lawsuit against a doctor?
In order to have a successful lawsuit, an individual must prove that the doctor’s delay in providing treatment was a result of medical negligence. Medical negligence occurs when a healthcare provider of any kind fails to meet the certain minimum standards of care when providing medical treatment to a patient. ...
What is medical malpractice?
Pursuing a medical malpractice claim is a complex and difficult process without the help of an experienced attorney. Such lawsuits involve expert medical witnesses, complex data, and confusing requirements, which can make the entire process expensive, stressful and lengthy.
What does "worsening" mean in medical terms?
Worsening of condition. Worsening of symptoms associated with condition. Decreased effectiveness of the treatment. Prolonged or intensified pain and discomfort. To prove that additional injury occurred as a result of the delayed treatment, this usually requires a medical expert as well. The medical expert must detail how ...
Can you receive compensation for delayed diagnosis?
While most of these cases do not result in significant harm, some instances can result in severe damage or consequences, such as a permanent hindrance or even death. If you or a loved one has received a delay in treatment or diagnosis, you may be eligible to receive compensation.
What is delayed treatment?
Delayed Treatment is known as untimely assessments of evolving symptoms or changes in a patient’s condition, and/or a delay in definitive treatment. In other words, it is when a doctor takes an evaluation of your current health and does not consider the severity of your condition, leading to a delay in the care you should actually be receiving. ...
What is the common issue occurring when going to a doctor?
A common issue occurring is the process of delayed treatment, resulting in a variety of negative consequences. When going to a doctor or hospital, we expect nothing but the best. There’s an inherent level of trust already built up between doctor and patient.
Is delayed treatment malpractice?
Those caring for you do not always search for the fact, and instead they assume their knowledge and assessment is correct. No matter what the situation may be, if your condition worsened due to delayed treatment, that is a form of malpractice.
Why is delay in treatment important?
Treatment delay is an important phenomenon in health care because it affects the ability of clinicians to deliver appropriate treatment in a timely manner. Delay in treatment can result in increased morbidity and mortality. For example, if a person is experiencing symptoms of a heart attack, delay in seeking care prevents the application of proven treatments such as thrombolysis or angioplasty that minimize or prevent the heart attack. Delay results in greater destruction of heart muscle, leading to a poorer prognosis and reduced quality of life.
Why is delay important in healthcare?
Because delay in providing care causes increased morbidity and mortality, health care providers must understand the reasons for delay so that they can intervene in an appropriate and effective manner. For example, if patients state that they delay seeking treatment for symptoms because they will be embarrassed if the symptoms are nothing, then an appropriate intervention might be for the health care provider to focus on this issue, acknowledging that embarrassment is a normal response. A cost/benefit argument might be made that given the benefit of early treatment, being wrong on occasion is less important than avoiding the potential disability and loss of personal productive capacity. Lastly, it is important to note that most factors influencing patient delay are often modifiable, and therefore and efforts to reduce patient delay have direct benefits to patients in terms of decreased morbidity and mortality.
How does delay affect treatment?
There are a number of psychosocial factors that influence treatment-seeking behavior. These factors may change somewhat depending on different disease states. People vary greatly in how they experience or perceive symptoms. Delay may increase if symptoms do not match a patient’s expectation or are different than what she or he experienced previously in the same illness. Delay time can be increased if symptoms are vague, confusing, intermittent, or come on gradually. In the case of heart attack symptoms, patients often delay if they believe that the symptoms are not cardiac related. Severity of pain or other symptoms has not been shown to consistently affect delay time.
What is patient delay?
Patient delay is a complex, multifaceted problem, and the time between symptom onset and seeking definitive treatment is often divided into phases to gain a better understanding of the issue. The process of evaluating an illness may be different based on a number of factors, including timing of the symptoms (i.e., early or late in the process), their potential seriousness, and the amount of discomfort experienced. Researchers have labeled the stages of patient delay slightly differently; however, there is general agreement that it is helpful to divide them into the following three stages.
What is the delay in diagnosis in medical malpractice?
Proving that a delay in diagnosis lead to additional injury—prolonged treatment and additional pain and suffering that should have been avoided—is necessary to establish a medical malpractice claim. Get more details on proving a medical malpractice case and the damages component of a medical malpractice lawsuit.
What does it mean when a doctor fails to do a procedure in Y amount of time?
There is no law you can point to that says, "If this doctor failed to do X procedure in Y amount of time, negligence has occurred.". Proving your case means having the right lawyer and the right experts on your side, who can sift through and analyze significant amount of evidence and put together your best case.
What happens if a doctor fails to intubate a patient?
If a doctor fails to intubate a patient in a timely manner, brain damage or even death may result. This type of delay in emergency treatment could amount to medical negligence.
What does it mean to be successful in a medical malpractice lawsuit?
When a doctor or other health care professional fails to provide timely care to a patient, a viable medical malpractice case can result, but being successful in this kind of lawsuit means being able to answer "yes" to a few key questions (and it also means backing up those answers with strong evidence).
How to prove medical negligence?
Proving medical negligence usually requires the testimony of a medical expert witness who will establish what the appropriate course of treatment would have been under the circumstances, and then explain how the doctor's conduct fell short of that standard.
Can you sue a doctor for malpractice?
If you want to sue a doctor for medical malpractice, it's not enough that to show that the doctor failed to treat a disease or injury in time; the delay must also have caused additional injury (" damages " in legalese). That means showing exactly how—and to what extent—the delay in the provision of medical care harmed you.
Why do delays in treatment occur?
There are numerous reasons why a patient may be a victim of delay in treatment, including the following:
Contact Us
If you would like to learn more about delay in treatment and the dangers associated with this form of medical malpractice, contact the Indianapolis personal injury lawyers of the Hankey Law Office today at (800) 520-3633 with your questions and concerns.
What to do if a patient cannot be reached?
Health care organizations can do the same. If the patient cannot be reached by the available contact information, try other means including online sources as warranted by the clinical importance of contacting the patient. Assess how reliably individual patients are likely to be contacted and customize your approach.
What is malpractice standard of care?
The malpractice standard of care requires an effort to contact patients about abnormal test results that is proportionate to the harm that might occur without proper follow up. Two steps that could reduce the harm from failure to contact patients about abnormal test results are engaging patients in following up on pending tests ...
Why is there a delay in A&E?
A delay to a patient’s treatment can be due to various reasons, such as too few staff leading to a long wait in A&E or lack of equipment resulting in a delay to treatment. More frequently now there are substantial waits for routine appointments to see GPs and delays in transfer of care in hospitals impacting more and more people.
Why were appointments cancelled in the NHS?
As a result, routine treatments and appointments were cancelled in their millions across the NHS to free up beds to deal with coronavirus peaks. Polling by the BMA in May 2020 found more than half of doctors believed the pandemic had worsened care for patients without the virus.
How many people are on the waiting list for hospital care in 2020?
Even prior to the coronavirus outbreak, more than 1 in 6 patients were waiting more than 18 weeks for routine treatment. In January 2020, a total of 4.4 million patients were on waiting lists for planned hospital care and 730,000 of those had waited more than 18 weeks.
What is the risk of waiting for a GP appointment?
In early 2020 the Royal College of GPs commented on waiting times: “There is the risk that long waiting times for a GP appointment will deter some patients from seeing a GP at all , which could mean they seek help at a much later stage when the problem is much more serious.”.
How long should I wait in A&E?
The statistic that always makes the headlines is the wait in A&E: there is a national target that 95% of people should wait less than four hours in A&E.
How long does it take to get a talking therapy appointment?
People are waiting up to 112 days for talking therapies treatment, despite the supposed six-week maximum wait. In some areas first appointments are received in 4 days whilst others take up to 55. The average wait between the first and second appointment also varies between 13 and 112 days.
Why is my health insurance claim delayed?
In some cases, a delay in a health insurance claim is the result of an insurer investigating a claim and deciding that it doesn’t fall within the health plan’s scope of coverage. But in other cases, delays are the result of miscommunication.
What is the EOB for delayed claims?
When dealing with a delayed claim, useful information can be found on your explanation of benefits (EOB). This information includes: Your Claim Number: Each health insurance claim is assigned a unique number so it can be identified in an insurer’s system.
How to ask a doctor about a hospital bill?
Start with a phone call. Call the Doctor or Hospital: If you’re questioning a hospital charge or a bill from a physician’s office, you may be able to ask the doctor herself about the charge or you may have to start with someone in the billing department who can work on it for you.
What to do if your health insurance claims representative is uncooperative?
If the customer service representative with whom you speak is uncooperative or unhelpful, ask to speak to his or her supervisor.
