Case Study: Diagnosing the Merits of a Malpractice Case
The challenge
A small Rhode Island law firm asked for help evaluating the merits of a potential case involving a 61-year-old male suffering from multiple myeloma and amyloidosis, who was alleging his primary care physician missed telling signs of these conditions during a routine physical almost three years earlier.
Helping a small law firm evaluate the health of a case from a medical perspective
The solution
Guidepoint Legal Solutions delivered a Case Merit Analysis to compare the potential value of the case against the investment it would require. Following an exhaustive analysis of the medical records, our in-house team of doctors delivered a narrative summary of the relevant medical events, along with a recommendation for how to move forward.
The team’s summary included findings around:
- Liability: The primary care physician failed to convey her patient’s irregular urinalysis results in her notes, despite lab results showing the abnormality. Guidepoint’s doctors used these lab results to demonstrate protein in the urine three years before the eventual diagnosis of multiple myeloma and amyloidosis.
- Causation: Our doctors explained in detail how the delay in diagnosis led the disease to advance.
- Damages: Our team conveyed how the disease caused irreversible effects to the alleged victim’s heart and kidneys, highlighting how the delay in diagnosis dramatically affected the patient’s prognosis.
The results
With the Case Merit Analysis enabling the firm to get a better grasp of the missed diagnosis from a medical perspective, along with the resulting effects of the potential plaintiff’s disease, the attorneys decided to move forward with the case.
They later worked with Guidepoint to source expert witnesses, including a primary care physician to testify on liability, a medical oncologist to testify on causation and a cardiologist to testify on damages, strengthening the client’s case and providing the leverage needed to settle the suit.