Labs & Medical Malpractice

Take a different approach on how you look at the labs that conduct medical testing. They are a business. The results that you received are not guaranteed to be accurate. Another interesting thing that most people don’t know is that the day-to-day work done in these labs is likely not conducted by medical doctors.

Like any business, not all labs are the same, nor is quality control standardized. In all likelihood, every test that goes through a lab doesn’t get a quality control check. How are these checks done? Usually, in a batch of, for example, 100 tests, a portion of them go through a quality control examination. 

What does this mean? There is a tremendous amount of room for error and for something to go wrong. 

What Everyone Should Understand

A misdiagnosis or a delayed diagnosis has a significant impact on the patient. Both of the things mentioned above can mean that a patient’s Stage 1 diagnosis could be missed. More importantly, the ability to find something early—in most cases—means an increase in survival ratings. 

Labs handle such a large volume of things that require testing:

• Biopsies
• Tissue Samples
• Organs (Cellular & Whole Organ)

Think of it this way: it is the law of averages. If you drive enough, the greater your chances of being involved in a car accident. Labs are not different. The more volume they face, the larger the potential is for something to be missed. 

As patients, we all put a lot of faith and confidence in labs. We rely on them to confirm or deny if something is wrong with our health. And we are 100% dependent on them to make a diagnosis without knowing their level of experience. 

When it comes to diseases, the skill it takes to detect them can be extraordinary. They are looking for very subtle things. Most of the time, techs and doctors get it right. We are not talking about an overall broken process. But what we are highlighting is there is room for error—and those errors have the potential to be catastrophic. 

It is the difference between probable and possible.

Artificial Intelligence

What happens when there isn’t someone making the diagnosis or determination? Artificial intelligence is playing a more significant role now than before. Mammograms can be machine-read. Is this better or worse than having a person read it? Because of how new it is, there needs to be more data and time to know for sure. 

But there have been circumstances where a machine and a person have come up with two different interpretations of the same sample. Which one is right? There is room for error.

Silberstein & Miklos, P.C.

At Silberstein & Miklos, we have taken on cases that others have turned away from—and we won. Our attorneys don’t give up because that is what our clients expect and deserve. We are compassionate as we are aggressive. Call us today for a free consultation at 1-877-ASK4SAM.