Medical Malpractice

Important note: This page is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical or legal advice. If you are experiencing a medical emergency, seek medical care immediately. If you believe medical negligence harmed you or a loved one, speak with an attorney as soon as possible because legal deadlines may apply.

Patients go to doctors because they need help. They may be preparing for childbirth, facing cancer, seeking answers about pain, or trying to understand symptoms that do not feel right. In those moments, patients should be heard, examined, and treated according to the accepted standard of care.

When a medical professional fails to listen, fails to test, fails to diagnose, or fails to act promptly, the consequences can be life-changing. For women of color, research and lived experience show that the risk of being dismissed or misdiagnosed can be even greater.

This white paper explains how misdiagnosis can become medical malpractice, why bias in health care matters, how delayed action can lead to birth injuries or other serious harm, and what legal options may be available when a patient or family has been harmed.

Medical Bias, Misdiagnosis, And Women Of Color

Misdiagnosis happens when a health care professional fails to correctly identify a patient's condition. That failure may lead to delayed treatment, unnecessary treatment, worsening illness, permanent injury, or death.

Diagnostic errors can affect any patient, but women and minority patients have been shown to face added risks. The problem is not only individual bias. It is also structural. Medical training, clinical images, diagnostic assumptions, time pressure, and communication gaps can all affect whether a physician recognizes symptoms in patients whose bodies, skin tones, or reported pain do not match the examples they were trained to expect.

What Challenges Do Women Of Color Face In Health Care?

Failure To Treat Pain During Labor

Pain during labor should be assessed with care and urgency. Yet Black women have reported delays in pain treatment and epidural access. Some of these delays are connected to false beliefs about pain tolerance, drug-seeking assumptions, or a failure to listen when a patient says something is wrong.

Failure To Believe Symptoms

Many serious conditions begin with symptoms that patients can feel before a test confirms the diagnosis. Shortness of breath, fatigue, chest pain, weakness, severe headache, unusual bleeding, fever, worsening pain, or a parent's concern about a newborn may all require careful attention.

When medical professionals dismiss symptoms without appropriate examination or testing, the patient may lose critical time. A delay can allow heart failure, infection, cancer, meningitis, pregnancy complications, or other dangerous conditions to worsen.

Failure To Take Prompt Action

Some conditions require fast intervention. A newborn with jaundice may need bilirubin testing and treatment. A mother with abnormal symptoms after childbirth may need urgent evaluation. A patient with signs of infection may need labs, imaging, medication, or admission.

Birth Injuries And Delayed Diagnosis

Birth injury cases often involve both medical and legal complexity. A delay in recognizing fetal distress, oxygen deprivation, infection, jaundice, maternal complications, or abnormal monitoring can lead to serious injury for a child or mother.

Oxygen Deprivation And HIE

Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, often called HIE, can occur when a newborn's brain does not receive enough oxygen or blood flow. Depending on the facts, warning signs may include abnormal fetal heart tracings, labor complications, delayed delivery, or failure to respond to distress.

Infections That Should Have Been Detected

Untreated infections such as Group B streptococcus, neonatal sepsis, meningitis, congenital syphilis, HIV transmission, or hepatitis B transmission may cause severe harm. A medical team may need to recognize risk factors, order tests, monitor symptoms, and treat promptly.

Jaundice-Related Brain Injury And Kernicterus

Jaundice can be harder to visually assess in babies with darker skin. If elevated bilirubin is missed or untreated, a newborn may develop kernicterus, a rare but serious condition that can cause permanent neurological damage and hearing loss.

Medication And Monitoring Errors

Birth injury cases may also involve medication errors, improper dosing of labor-inducing drugs, delayed response to abnormal fetal heart tracings, or failure to monitor a mother or baby closely enough.

What Is Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice occurs when a physician, hospital, or other health care provider fails to meet the applicable standard of care and that failure causes harm. Not every bad medical outcome is malpractice. Medicine involves uncertainty, and some injuries occur even with appropriate care.

What Is Misdiagnosis In A Medical Malpractice Claim?

Misdiagnosis may involve a wrong diagnosis, missed diagnosis, delayed diagnosis, or failure to order appropriate testing. It may also involve misreading test results, failing to follow up, ignoring symptoms, or treating a patient for the wrong condition.

A misdiagnosis becomes legally significant when the error falls below the standard of care and causes harm.

How Do You Hold A Medical Professional Liable For Misdiagnosis?

Medical malpractice cases are commonly built around four negligence elements: duty, breach, causation, and damages.

Duty

Duty generally exists when there is a provider-patient relationship. The provider must treat the patient according to the applicable standard of care.

Breach

Breach means the provider failed to meet that standard. In a misdiagnosis case, this may involve failure to examine, test, monitor, refer, interpret results, or respond to symptoms as a reasonably careful provider would have done.

Causation

Causation connects the breach to the harm. The question is not only whether a provider made a mistake, but whether that mistake caused injury, worsened the condition, reduced the chance of recovery, or led to avoidable harm.

Damages

Damages may include medical expenses, lost income, pain, impairment, future care costs, life care needs, and other losses.

Texas Medical Malpractice Deadlines And Damage Issues

Texas medical malpractice claims can involve strict deadlines. In general, Texas law provides a two-year limitations period for many health care liability claims, but exceptions and special rules may apply.

Texas law also contains limits on certain categories of damages in health care liability claims. These rules are technical and may significantly affect the value and strategy of a case. Because deadlines and damages rules can change the outcome of a claim, patients and families should speak with an attorney as soon as possible.

What To Do If Race Played A Role In Your Care

If you believe race, gender, or bias affected your care, start by preserving information. Request medical records, write down dates and names, save messages, and document symptoms, conversations, and follow-up instructions. If there was an emergency or continuing medical issue, seek appropriate medical care immediately.

Request complete medical records from every provider involved.

Write a timeline while the details are still fresh.

Save portal messages, discharge instructions, prescriptions, and bills.

Ask whether another physician should evaluate the condition or injury.

Speak with a medical malpractice attorney before deadlines expire.

About Larry F. Taylor, Jr.

For Larry F. Taylor, Jr., advocacy for people harmed by medical negligence is both professional and personal. His work with The Cochran Firm Texas includes birth injury, medical malpractice, mass torts, employment, civil rights, and other matters affecting everyday people. He believes clients should be heard, informed, and supported when they are facing some of the most difficult moments of their lives.