A doctor must diagnose a person so that they receive appropriate treatment. Unfortunately, doctors may not spend enough time trying to understand a person's symptoms. Some doctors don't diagnose patients, meaning they don't discover the underlying cause of their symptoms. Other diagnostic errors consisted of making a misdiagnosis or reaching the wrong conclusion.
Patients who do not receive the correct diagnosis may not receive the treatment they need or may undergo unnecessary treatment. Doctors can make medication errors when prescribing a medication to a patient with a known contraindication, such as an allergy to a certain type of medication. Other times, errors can come from nursing staff dispensing medications in hospital wards or scheduling intravenous (IV) medication. Pharmacists and technicians can also make significant errors when dispensing or combine medications.
Medication errors can lead to interactions, overdoses, or unsuccessful medical treatments. Hundreds of thousands of surgeries are performed each month in the United States, and a small percentage of them involve major errors. Doctors operate on the wrong part of the body, perform the wrong procedure, or leave objects after closing a person's incision. Each of these errors can have catastrophic consequences for the patient involved. Surgical errors may make a person unable to undergo appropriate treatment or may require secondary surgeries to correct the problem during the initial operation.
All doctors must maintain professional liability (medical malpractice) insurance to practice medicine in the United States. Professional liability insurance is purchased to mitigate the financial risk of liability that results from the fact that the doctor practices medicine. Professional liability insurance generally covers errors related to misdiagnoses, late diagnoses, birth-related injuries, medication prescription errors, or errors in the administration of anesthesia. The financial risks of medical malpractice lawsuits are not limited to the judgments handed down to the plaintiff, the costs of arbitration, medical damages, punitive damages, compensatory damages, attorney fees, court costs, and fines.
The two main types of medical malpractice coverage are a claims-based policy or a case-based policy. A policy based on medical malpractice cases will pay for a medical malpractice claim based on the period in which you had the insurance, regardless of whether you currently own the policy. On the other hand, a claims-based policy will only cover payment if a claim is filed against you during the term of the policy. Because a basic claims-based policy only covers a person for acts that occur during the term of the active policy, doctors often need to obtain or buy back coverage, making the policy more like an event policy, where the doctor is covered for previous actions, even if the previous policy is no longer in effect.
In addition, doctors must know if the policy contains a true consent clause to reach an agreement. If a policy does not contain a true consent clause to reach an agreement, the insurance company can settle a claim, without the doctor's approval, for a medical malpractice case that can be defended in court and that is registered with the National Professional Data Bank (NPDB).).
