Heart attack misdiagnosis cases generally involve a doctor’s failure to correctly diagnose and treat a heart attack. However, different doctors may be held to different standards in misdiagnosis cases. Jeff Milman, a California attorney who has been practicing law for over 25 years and whose practice focuses on medical negligence cases, explained these standards of care in a recent interview.

Differing standards of care

A doctor is held to the standard of what an ordinary and reasonably prudent practitioner in the same or similar specialty and circumstances would be held to, according to Milman, who says that is true nationwide, as well He explained, “What that means is that if you're evaluating the conduct of an internal medicine practitioner in his office, you would look at what a different internal medicine practitioner should have done under the same or similar circumstances.” He provided the following example:

Doctors will sometimes choose to treat patients even though it's not in their specialty. For example, if a family practice doctor decides that something is cardiac in nature and chooses to treat the patient without referring the patient to a cardiologist, then that family practice doctor will be held to the same standard of what a cardiologist would have done because they’re placing themselves into that situation.

You'll often see that an admitting physician, somebody who's quarterbacking the patient, will call in for specialty consults. For example, if it's an infectious process, they’ll call in an infectious disease specialist. They do that because if you're the admitting physician and you choose to treat the patient for some infectious disease, you're going be held to the standard of what an infectious disease doctor would have done. So, whether the conduct you're looking at happened in an urgent care facility, in the doctor's office or an emergency setting, you’re going to be looking at experts in those particular specialties.

Bottom line: put together a differential diagnosis

The bottom line is that a physician has to correctly evaluate a patient. According to Milman, “When a patient comes in with various symptoms, physicians are routinely taught, whether it is in the urgent care setting, the emergency room, or your doctor's office, that a differential diagnosis should be done.”

“That means, in order to diagnosis the most likely causes of the symptoms, there needs to be proper testing. However, we see many cases in which doctors don’t do the proper testing or misinterpret the testing that is done. For example, they’ll read an EKG (or electrocardiograms, which record the electrical activity of the heart over time) as normal, even thought it's not, or they’ll choose something on the differential diagnosis that is not lethal such as gastritis in favor of something that's more lethal.”

If you or a loved one has been injured or died due to a heart attack misdiagnosis, contact an attorney whose practice focuses on medical negligence cases. Consultations are free, without obligation and are strictly confidential. To contact a qualified attorney to discuss your situation, please click here.