When a doctor is not on the same page with another doctor regarding a patient’s treatment serious injuries can occur. These types of errors are called communication or handoff errors and happen in hospitals and medical offices across the county.
Essentially, what can happen is a treating doctor sends a patient out for tests. For whatever reason, the doctor does not include vital information to the referring doctor and this causes the referring doctor to not have vital information regarding the treatment of the patient.
Or for example, in a breast cancer misdiagnosis case, the radiologist mixes up the results and the patient is lead to believe there is no cancer present when in reality there cancer is there for all to see.
If the above error was not made the patient would have had a great chance of beating the cancer but because of the error, the patient’s cancer has jumped to stage III or IV.
These are but a few examples in which communication and handoff errors can occur. They also present themselves with nurses and their actions or inactions.
To speak with someone about how your cancer or injury is the result of a communication or handoff error, we invite you to give us a call. We can be reached at 301-850-4832. We answer questions like yours regarding Maryland law all the time and we would be glad to listen to your story.
