Facing the need for emergency care, an individual finds their way to the local emergency room. After speaking with a nurse, the patient is taken back to an examination bed where the emergency room physician begins their diagnostic review. Few questions about the patient are asked. The physician relies almost entirely on the test results, blood work, and other measurable data to create a diagnosis.

Instead of verifying symptoms with the patient directly in front of him, the ER physician chooses to treat a patient in need as a chart rather than a person capable of providing feedback and helpful information. 

The results from this interaction were not good. Instead of being admitted for necessary hospital care, this person was discharged from the emergency room and later suffered a worsening of their condition. 

If you have suffered a worsening of an injury or illness because of an issue with emergency room medical care, contact Crim Law today. Our team of legal professionals serves clients who have been injured or whose illnesses have worsened due to emergency room negligence. 

Time Spent Reviewing a Medical Chart is Time Spent Away from Patients

When emergency room physicians and their staff focus on a patient’s chart, they necessarily focus on what is contained on its pages. In addition to reading the chart, physicians spend time entering notes into it. 

As physicians increase the time they devote to charting, it is no wonder their focus shifts from treatment to the chart. Emergency room staff treat patients almost as a secondary consideration compared to their charts. 

In the short term, this means that an ER physician may miss a valuable opportunity to share a recommendation with a patient based on a symptom the patient described that did not appear in the chart. Questions regarding the physical, mental, and social aspects of an illness or injury are neglected. Instead, the raw data of test results are focused on via the chart directly in front of the doctor and their staff. 

Patient Recovery Depends Upon the Support of ER Staff

Proper diagnosis, medication, and surgical recommendations are all critical to a patient’s well-being. However, our West Virginia failure to diagnose attorneys also understand that the better an ER staff is able to connect with and establish a rapport with a patient, the better the patient tends to respond to the treatment prescribed by a physician. 

Consider the risks for a patient who spends most of their time in the emergency room interacting with a medical assistant or scribe rather than a physician. These support staff members are there to document test results and write down the patient’s experiences of pain. Their notes are then provided to a physician who reviews the chart and makes a recommendation. This often occurs with as little as one minute of direct physician-patient interaction. 

Subtle changes in a patient’s condition can occur in just a few hours from the time a patient enters the emergency room to when a physician is finally able to speak with him or her. If that opportunity to interact with the patient is not taken advantage of by the physician, then critical diagnoses may be missed. 

How a West Virginia Failure to Diagnose Attorney Reviews a Case

When an injury victim meets with an attorney at the firm, our team attempts to determine the level of awareness the ER staff had about the impending problem. Key evidence used to determine the level of awareness of a physician and their staff includes:

• Imaging from X-rays
• Emergency Room medical records 
• Photographs, video, and other evidence of what was going on during the ER visit

Our office takes the time necessary to thoroughly investigate the case. If we determine that the ER staff member did or should have had sufficient awareness of the upcoming problem, it is necessary to determine whether the physician or ER staff member disregarded their situational awareness by deferring to their chart. 

Finding Clues in Medical Records: Did the Injury Victim Receive Proper Care?

A review of a client’s medical records is not just a quick activity with Crim Law Office, PLLC. Rather, we chart the entire ER course of events as experienced by our client. From the moment the client speaks to ER staff to when he or she leaves emergency care, as much detail as possible is noted by our team. 

By taking the time to speak with our client, review their medical records, and apply our decades of combined experience serving clients, we determine what the ER knew or should have known prior to the mistake. Was there an obvious clue provided by our client that the ER physician should have picked up on during their conversation with him or her? Was their over-reliance and focus on their medical chart the cause of a missed diagnosis?

The small details of a case are often where an experienced West Virginia missed diagnosis attorney can truly help a client. When a client reports telling the ER physician about a particular issue he was experiencing, but the physician and their staff failed to consider that information, a missed diagnosis can occur. Rather than receiving necessary care, our client may have been sent home prematurely to suffer due to a worsening of their illness. 

The Crim Law Office, PLLC — We Fight for Your Rights

Contact Crim Law today for a free case review. Our team of client-focused attorneys knows what it takes to help injured people receive just compensation in emergency room negligence cases.