The human body is complex, with a robust system for healing. Unfortunately, medical conditions, injuries, and surgical procedures are also complex, with many opportunities for complications that sometimes make a patient’s healing or recovery go awry. Fortunately, adequate follow-up care promptly addresses and corrects most cases of complications, but what happens when a medical provider’s failure to provide appropriate follow-up care or monitor a patient’s disease process or recovery results in a medical setback, serious illness, worsened medical outcome, or death?
Although nothing can erase the harm caused by inadequate medical follow-up, a patient who suffers adverse effects from this failure can recover compensation for their economic losses through a St. Louis medical malpractice claim.
What Is a Doctor’s Duty When It Comes to Follow-Up Care?
During and after an illness, injury, or medical procedure, a patient’s medical status can change at any time, either gradually or suddenly, depending on the cause of the change in their health. For this reason, an essential aspect of medical care includes follow-up monitoring and administering necessary follow-up treatment. Common types of follow-up care include:
- Monitoring the progress of medical treatments
- Managing medications by checking the effectiveness of prescribed medications on a patient
- Monitoring patients for changes in medical status or health after a surgery or medical event
- Providing personalized follow-up care based on a patient’s condition
- Answering a patient’s questions after a medical procedure or in response to phone calls from a patient to their doctor
Follow-up care is critical in many medical situations, such as following up on a patient’s post-surgical recovery or monitoring a patient undergoing cancer treatment. Failing to provide this critical portion of a care plan is medical malpractice when it results in harm to the patient.
Examples of Inadequate Medical Follow-ups
Adequate follow-up care is often critical for ensuring a patient’s recovery is going as hoped, or to monitor the progress of a chronic disease. Unfortunately, sometimes medical practitioners drop the ball on this aspect of their patients’ care. Common examples of a doctor’s failure to provide adequate medical follow-up care include the following:
- Inadequate post-surgical monitoring
- Failure to monitor a patient’s treatment progress
- Failure to alert a patient to abnormal test results
- Failure to adjust a patient’s treatment in response to changes in their medical status or complications
- Failure to refer a patient to a specialist
- Neglecting to return a patient’s phone call
- Not providing adequate discharge instructions
- Failure to send complete medical records when transferring a patient
Failing to provide adequate follow-up treatment and monitoring can result in serious harm to the patient. If a medical provider makes attempts to follow up on patient care and the patient neglects to respond to the attempts or fails to follow the doctor’s recommendations, the doctor cannot be held liable; however, when the breakdown in necessary follow-up treatment results from a doctor’s negligence, it is a breach of the provider’s legal duty of care, leaving them liable for the damages like medical expenses, lost wages, and compensation for the additional pain and suffering or worsened medical outcome the patient experienced.
If a doctor’s failure to provide adequate follow-up treatment causes their patient’s death, the family can recover financial justice and accountability through a medical malpractice wrongful death claim.