Delayed Diagnosis

Delayed diagnosis claims arise when the correct diagnosis is eventually reached, but reached so late that the delay caused or worsened the patient’s injury. Common contexts include cancer, sepsis, stroke, cauda equina syndrome, ectopic pregnancy, compartment syndrome, and bowel ischemia, all of which carry significant downside risk when diagnosis is deferred.

Delayed diagnosis is distinct from failure to diagnose (where the condition was never identified at all) and from misdiagnosis (where a different and wrong diagnosis was made). In a delayed diagnosis claim, the standard of care analysis focuses on whether the relevant practitioner should have recognized the signs and ordered investigations sooner, while the causation analysis focuses on what difference earlier diagnosis would have made to outcome. The latter is often the harder element to prove, particularly in oncology cases, where the stage at the point of actual diagnosis may already commit the patient to a poor prognosis regardless of when the diagnosis was made.

Posts tagged Delayed Diagnosis analyze how Ontario courts have approached the standard of care and causation questions in delayed diagnosis claims across multiple clinical contexts.