Legal Question in Medical Malpractice in Pennsylvania

Re: Medical Tests

Unless you are 18 or older your parents can consult a lawyer on your behalf. In any event they clearly want you to approve of the idea. You don't yet know what harm you have suffered as a result of the delay. Unfortunately you don't provide enough information for me to assess the degree of risk, if any, you are subject to. You have to understand the nature of what was seen on the MRI and why and what further evaluation is required. You and your parents need to have this information for the sake of your health. If you learn that you have some injury or future risk as a result of delay or require any treatment that otherwise would not have been required or if you are unsure, contact a lawyer with experience in medical malpractice cases. A lawyer can help you understand what has happened and whether you need to take any legal steps.

Re: Medical Tests

You definitely might have a medical malpractice claim here in the form of failure to diagnose. Give our officse a call to discuss your options and recovery.

Re: Medical Tests

Your confusion and nervousness, under the circumstances, is understandable.

Notwithstanding your confusion and nervousness, you must seek medical evaluation as soon as possible regarding this finding.

Regarding your question about whether you should speak to a lawyer, I encourage anyone who believes they may have been a victim of medical malpractice to call lawyers as soon as possible to discuss their case. Most malpractice attorneys will speak with you without charge to see if you have a case that they would be interested in taking.

I, personally, would not take this case for the reasons I state below. This is my opinion only, another attorney may have a different opinion, so I urge you to see you additional legal opinions.

Your post raises a number of issues:

The statute of limitations for medical malpractice is generally two years from the date of the incident. In your case, the �discovery rule� might extend the time to two years from the date you learned about the finding. You have not indicated your age. Under Pennsylvania law, the two years does not start running until your 18th birthday.

As far as why I would not be interested in your case:

First, an attorney taking this case would need to convince a jury that you were not informed of the need to follow up on this finding. While this might not have occurred, the fact that the record says that you did need to follow up, and that a doctor took it on himself to contact you, would tend to make a jury believe a doctor�s claim that you were told to follow up the first time.

Next, we do not know at this point if there was a missed opportunity to treat an important problem.

As I stated before, this is my opinion only, I encourage you to seek other opinions.

Re: Medical Tests

Has the delay caused any physical harm?