Your doctor looked you in the eye and told you what was wrong. You believed them. Why wouldn’t you? They went to medical school, they ran tests, they seemed confident. So you went home and followed their instructions. You took the medication they prescribed. You tried to get better. But you didn’t get better. You got worse. And eventually, someone figured out what was actually happening inside your body. By then, the damage was done.
If this sounds like your story, you are not alone. Diagnostic errors are the single most common, most harmful, and most expensive category of medical mistake in the United States. They cause more death and permanent disability than surgical errors. They generate more malpractice claims than medication mistakes. And they happen far more often than most people realize.
I’m Scott DeSalvo. I’ve been a personal injury attorney in Chicago for over 27 years. I became a lawyer because I watched my father, a Teamster truck driver, spend 17 years fighting through the legal system after he was seriously hurt on the job. I was nine years old when it started. By the time it was over, I had decided that I would spend my career standing up for people who get chewed up by the system. If a doctor’s diagnostic error caused you serious harm, I want you to understand your legal rights. This page will explain what diagnostic errors are, how they happen, and what it takes to hold the responsible parties accountable under Illinois law. If you want to talk about your situation, call me at 312-500-4500. The call is free. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We also speak Spanish.
A diagnostic error is not simply a wrong guess. The National Academy of Medicine defines a diagnostic error as the failure to establish an accurate and timely explanation of a patient’s health problem, or the failure to communicate that explanation to the patient. That definition is important because it captures all the different ways diagnosis can go wrong. A doctor who tells you that your chest pain is heartburn when you are actually having a heart attack has made a diagnostic error. But so has a radiologist who correctly identifies a suspicious mass on your scan and then fails to tell anyone about it. Both situations can kill you.
Diagnostic errors take several distinct forms. A misdiagnosis occurs when the doctor identifies the wrong condition entirely. You are told you have bronchitis when you actually have pneumonia. You are told you have anxiety when you are actually developing a blood clot in your lung. A missed diagnosis occurs when no diagnosis is made at all, and your condition is overlooked. You are sent home from the doctor’s office without any explanation for your symptoms, and the disease that is silently progressing inside your body goes completely undetected. A delayed diagnosis occurs when the correct diagnosis is eventually made, but not soon enough. The condition advances to a stage where the treatment options are fewer, the prognosis is worse, and the suffering is greater than it needed to be.
All three forms of diagnostic error can serve as the basis for a medical malpractice claim in Illinois. The critical question is not which label applies, but whether a competent physician exercising reasonable care would have reached the correct diagnosis sooner, and whether the delay or error caused you harm.
The numbers are staggering. A landmark study published by Johns Hopkins researchers in BMJ Quality and Safety estimated that approximately 795,000 Americans suffer permanent disability or death from diagnostic error every single year. That is not a typo. Nearly 800,000 people a year are seriously harmed because a doctor got the diagnosis wrong.
The same research team analyzed tens of thousands of malpractice claims and found that diagnostic errors are the most common type of medical error, the most catastrophic in terms of patient outcomes, and the most costly in terms of malpractice payouts. They account for roughly one in three malpractice claims and produce the highest total penalty payouts of any category of medical mistake. One out of every three people will experience a diagnostic error in their lifetime, and researchers have concluded that most of us will experience at least one, sometimes with devastating consequences.
The overall average diagnostic error rate across diseases is approximately 11 percent. But that number obscures enormous variation depending on the condition involved. The error rate for heart attacks is about 1.5 percent. The error rate for spinal abscess is 62 percent. The conditions in between span a range that reveals just how difficult diagnosis can be, and just how often doctors fall short.
The Johns Hopkins research team identified three broad categories of disease that account for nearly 75 percent of all serious harms from diagnostic error. They call them the Big Three: vascular events, infections, and cancers. Understanding these categories helps explain where diagnostic errors are most likely to occur and why the consequences are so frequently catastrophic.
Vascular events include strokes, heart attacks, blood clots in the legs and lungs, and aortic aneurysms and dissections. These conditions involve disruptions to blood flow that can cause permanent tissue damage or death within hours or even minutes. Of all diagnostic errors leading to serious harm, 22.8 percent involve vascular events. Missed stroke is the single leading cause of serious harm from diagnostic error in the entire country, with a misdiagnosis rate of 17.5 percent. That means roughly one in six stroke patients is initially told they are experiencing something else entirely.
Strokes are missed because their symptoms, particularly dizziness, headache, and confusion, overlap with dozens of less dangerous conditions. A stroke that presents as a sudden severe headache may be dismissed as a migraine. A stroke that causes dizziness and imbalance may be attributed to an inner ear problem. Every hour of delay in stroke treatment destroys approximately 120 million neurons, and the treatment window for the most effective intervention is brutally short. When a doctor misreads the situation, the consequences can be measured in dead brain tissue.
Heart attacks are misdiagnosed because they do not always present with the dramatic chest-clutching episodes that people expect from movies. Women in particular frequently experience heart attacks with symptoms like jaw pain, nausea, fatigue, and shortness of breath rather than classic crushing chest pain. Approximately 11,000 heart attacks are misdiagnosed every year in the United States. When a heart attack is mistaken for acid reflux or a panic attack, the delay in treatment allows heart muscle to die. That damage is permanent.
Pulmonary embolism, a blood clot that travels to the lungs, is another frequently missed vascular event. Its symptoms, which include chest pain, shortness of breath, and a rapid heart rate, can mimic pneumonia, anxiety, or even a muscle strain. A pulmonary embolism can be fatal within hours, and the diagnostic test to detect it is straightforward. When doctors fail to consider the possibility and fail to order the test, the results are preventable tragedies.
Infections account for 13.5 percent of high-severity diagnostic errors. The most dangerous missed infection is sepsis, a condition in which the body’s response to infection spirals out of control and begins destroying its own organs. Sepsis kills approximately 350,000 Americans per year, and early recognition is the single most important factor in survival. Every hour that passes without appropriate antibiotic treatment increases the mortality rate. When a doctor mistakes early sepsis for the flu or a stomach virus, the window for effective treatment closes rapidly.
Meningitis is another commonly missed infection with catastrophic consequences. Bacterial meningitis can progress from initial symptoms to death in less than 24 hours. The early symptoms, including fever, headache, and neck stiffness, can resemble a viral illness, and in young children, even those classic signs may be absent. Pneumonia, endocarditis, and spinal infections round out the list of infections most frequently associated with serious diagnostic error. Each of these conditions has a treatment that works, but only if the diagnosis is made in time.
Cancers represent the largest share of serious diagnostic error harms at 37.8 percent. The cancers most commonly involved in misdiagnosis claims include lung cancer, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, and melanoma. Cancer misdiagnosis is disproportionately represented in malpractice claims filed from outpatient settings, where patients present to their primary care physicians or specialists with early symptoms that are dismissed or attributed to benign causes.
The reason cancer dominates the diagnostic error landscape is straightforward. Cancer is a disease defined by time. A tumor that is caught at stage one is often curable. The same tumor caught at stage four may be a death sentence. When a doctor dismisses persistent fatigue as stress, ignores a changing skin lesion as a cosmetic concern, or attributes unexplained weight loss to diet changes, the cancer that is actually responsible continues to grow and spread silently. By the time someone finally orders the right test, the disease may have advanced beyond the point where aggressive treatment can succeed.
Diagnostic errors are rarely caused by doctors who do not know medicine. The vast majority are caused by doctors who know medicine very well but whose thinking is derailed by predictable patterns of cognitive failure. Understanding these patterns is critical because they form the foundation of a malpractice case. When we can show that a doctor’s reasoning process broke down in a specific, identifiable way, we can demonstrate to a jury exactly how and why the standard of care was violated.
Premature closure is the single most common cognitive error in diagnosis. It occurs when a doctor accepts a diagnosis before fully verifying it. The maxim that captures this phenomenon is simple: when the diagnosis is made, the thinking stops. A classic study of 100 diagnostic errors in internal medicine found that cognitive factors were present in 74 percent of cases, and premature closure was the most frequently identified error.
Premature closure is especially dangerous when patients present with symptoms that overlap between benign and life-threatening conditions. A woman who arrives at the doctor’s office with a cough, chest pain, and shortness of breath two weeks after being treated for a sinus infection may be quickly diagnosed with lingering respiratory inflammation. The doctor’s brain connects the dots between the recent sinus infection and the current symptoms, and the diagnostic process shuts down. The pulmonary embolism that is actually causing those symptoms goes undetected until it is too late.
Anchoring bias occurs when a doctor latches onto an early piece of information and fails to adjust their thinking as new evidence emerges. The initial impression becomes an anchor, and all subsequent data is filtered through the lens of that first conclusion. A study from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality documented a case in which a 61-year-old man with a history of stroke presented to his primary care physician with burning pain and numbness in his left foot. The doctor attributed the symptoms to peripheral neuropathy and referred him to podiatry. The patient returned six more times over two months with progressively worsening symptoms. Each time, the anchored diagnosis held. No one investigated alternatives. The actual cause was vascular insufficiency, a condition that required completely different treatment. By the time it was identified, the delay had caused permanent damage.
Anchoring bias is compounded by something called diagnosis momentum. Once a diagnosis enters a patient’s medical record, it tends to carry forward. Each subsequent provider reads the chart, sees the existing diagnosis, and accepts it without independently evaluating whether it is correct. Electronic medical records have made this problem worse, because an initial working diagnosis that was listed as probable gets copied forward into note after note until it appears to be established fact. In malpractice litigation, the medical record becomes a timeline of anchored thinking, and it can be extraordinarily powerful evidence for the plaintiff.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for evidence that supports what you already believe and to ignore or discount evidence that contradicts it. In a diagnostic context, this means a doctor who believes the patient has condition X will pay close attention to symptoms and test results consistent with condition X and will minimize findings that point toward condition Y. A survey of diagnostic errors in emergency rooms found confirmation bias present in 21.2 percent of cases, making it the second most common cognitive factor after overconfidence.
Confirmation bias is particularly dangerous in combination with anchoring. A doctor who has anchored on an initial diagnosis will selectively interpret new information to confirm that diagnosis. Normal cardiac enzymes in a patient suspected of having a heart attack might prompt reconsideration of the diagnosis, but a doctor operating under confirmation bias may simply rationalize the result away. The patient’s presentation is so consistent with a cardiac event, the doctor thinks, that the lab must have made an error, or the enzymes simply have not risen yet. Meanwhile, the actual condition goes untreated.
Availability bias causes doctors to overestimate the likelihood of diagnoses they have seen recently. If a physician just treated three patients with gastroenteritis, they are statistically more likely to diagnose the next patient with abdominal pain as having gastroenteritis, even if the clinical presentation suggests appendicitis. The recent cases are vivid and easily accessible in the doctor’s memory, and they exert a disproportionate influence on clinical reasoning. Research published in JAMA confirmed that recent experience induces availability bias in diagnoses, and that prompting physicians to engage in reflective reasoning significantly improved accuracy.
Attribution bias occurs when a doctor makes diagnostic assumptions based on stereotypes about the patient rather than the clinical evidence. A young athlete with chest pain is assumed to be experiencing a musculoskeletal strain. An overweight patient with shortness of breath is assumed to be out of shape. A patient who smells of alcohol and is found unconscious is assumed to be intoxicated. In each case, the doctor’s assumptions about the patient bypass the rigorous clinical reasoning that the standard of care requires. The young athlete may be having an arrhythmia. The overweight patient may have a pulmonary embolism. The unconscious patient may have a brain bleed. Attribution bias substitutes stereotypes for science, and the patients who are victimized by it pay the price.
Not all diagnostic errors originate in a doctor’s thinking. Many are caused by failures in the healthcare system itself, breakdowns in communication, technology, and workflow that allow critical information to fall through the cracks. These system failures are just as actionable in a malpractice case as individual cognitive errors, and they often implicate the hospital or healthcare institution as a defendant in addition to the individual physician.
One of the most infuriating categories of diagnostic error occurs when the correct diagnosis was actually available, but nobody told the right person. A radiologist identifies a suspicious lung nodule on a CT scan and mentions it in the written report, but the referring physician never reads the report or fails to notice the critical finding buried in boilerplate language. The patient goes home thinking everything is fine. Eighteen months later, the patient is diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. The nodule was visible on the original scan. Someone identified it. But the communication chain broke, and the patient suffered the consequences.
Communication failures were identified as contributing factors in 23 percent of radiology-related malpractice cases in one large study. Of those, 13 percent involved failures to communicate findings to the ordering physician, and 10 percent involved failures to communicate directly to the patient. The examples are heartbreaking. A radiologist’s critical over-read of a neck X-ray was documented but never verbally communicated as required by the hospital’s critical result process. The patient returned to the emergency department in full respiratory arrest and died before the updated report reached anyone who could act on it.
In Illinois, a 48-year-old man underwent an abdominal CT scan for kidney stone pain. The radiologist asked a secretary to call the referring physician with a preliminary report of no stones and an essentially normal scan. The next day, the radiologist’s formal written report noted a five-centimeter abdominal aortic aneurysm, but the radiologist never directly communicated this critical finding. The referring physician never received the written report. That case settled for $2.5 million, with liability split between the radiologist and the referring doctor.
Modern medicine is a team sport, and patients routinely transition between providers during shift changes, transfers between departments, and referrals to specialists. Each transition creates a seam where information can be lost. A critical lab result ordered by the day shift may come back after the night shift has taken over, and if the handoff communication was incomplete, the result may sit unreviewed for hours. A preliminary radiology reading performed overnight by a resident or a non-radiologist emergency physician may differ significantly from the formal interpretation issued the next morning. If the amended report is not flagged and communicated, patient care decisions based on the inaccurate initial read will go uncorrected.
Handoff failures are systemic problems, meaning they reflect deficiencies in hospital policies and procedures rather than individual incompetence. That matters in litigation because it opens the door to direct claims against the hospital for negligent institutional practices, not just vicarious liability for the actions of an individual doctor.
Diagnosis is not always a single event. Many conditions require a process of monitoring, repeat testing, and reassessment over time. When a doctor identifies a finding that requires follow-up, such as a small nodule that should be re-imaged in three months, or an abnormal blood test that needs to be repeated, the patient’s safety depends on a reliable system for tracking and ensuring that follow-up actually happens. Too often, that system does not exist, or it exists on paper but fails in practice. The follow-up appointment is never scheduled. The reminder letter is sent to an old address. The patient falls out of the system entirely, and the condition that should have been caught early is not diagnosed until it has progressed to a dangerous stage.
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Illinois medical malpractice law provides a clear legal framework for diagnostic error claims, but these cases are among the most complex in personal injury litigation. They require specialized medical knowledge, expert testimony, and an understanding of the cognitive and systemic factors that drive diagnostic failures.
Every diagnostic error malpractice case in Illinois requires proof of four elements. First, you must establish that a doctor-patient relationship existed, meaning the physician had a duty of care toward you. This is usually the easiest element to prove. If you went to the doctor and they agreed to evaluate or treat you, the relationship exists.
Second, you must prove that the physician breached the standard of care. In a diagnostic error case, this means demonstrating that a reasonably competent physician in the same specialty, under the same circumstances, would have reached the correct diagnosis sooner. The standard is not perfection. Doctors are not expected to be right every time. But they are expected to follow the accepted diagnostic methodology, which includes taking a thorough history, performing an appropriate physical examination, considering a reasonable range of possible diagnoses, ordering appropriate tests, and following up on results. When a doctor shortcuts this process, and particularly when they succumb to the kind of cognitive errors described above, they breach the standard of care.
Third, you must prove causation. This is often the most contested element in a diagnostic error case. You must show that the delayed or incorrect diagnosis actually caused harm, meaning that if the correct diagnosis had been made in a timely manner, the outcome would have been materially different. The defense will inevitably argue that the underlying disease, not the doctor’s error, caused the harm. Your medical expert must be able to explain, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, how earlier diagnosis would have changed the course of treatment and the ultimate outcome.
Fourth, you must prove damages. This means showing that you suffered actual, quantifiable harm as a result of the diagnostic error. That harm can include additional medical treatment you would not have needed, physical pain and suffering, emotional anguish, lost wages and earning capacity, and diminished quality of life.
Before you can even file a diagnostic error lawsuit in Illinois, you must comply with Section 2-622 of the Illinois Code of Civil Procedure. This statute requires that your complaint be accompanied by an affidavit from a qualified medical expert who has reviewed your case and concluded that there is a reasonable and meritorious cause for the filing of the action. The expert must provide a written report detailing the basis for their opinion. This requirement exists to weed out frivolous claims, and it means that a legitimate diagnostic error case requires expert involvement from the very beginning. A law firm that does not have established relationships with qualified medical experts in relevant specialties is not equipped to handle these cases.
The statute of limitations for medical malpractice in Illinois is two years from the date you discover, or reasonably should have discovered, the injury caused by the diagnostic error. There is also an absolute repose period of four years from the date of the negligent act or omission, meaning that even if you could not reasonably have discovered the error, you generally cannot file suit more than four years after it occurred.
For minors, the timeline is different. A child has until their 22nd birthday or eight years from the date of the negligent act, whichever provides more time. There is an important exception for federally funded healthcare facilities. If the negligent provider works at a federally qualified health center, such as a community health clinic that receives federal funding, the Federal Tort Claims Act may apply. Under the FTCA, the deadline to file an administrative claim is just two years from the date of the injury, and the eight-year protection that normally applies to minors under Illinois law does not apply. There are numerous federally funded clinics scattered throughout Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, and failing to identify this issue can be fatal to a case.
Diagnostic error cases can involve multiple defendants. The primary physician who missed the diagnosis is the most obvious target, but they are often not the only responsible party. A radiologist who fails to identify a visible abnormality on an imaging study, or who identifies it but fails to communicate it, can be held liable. A pathologist who misreads a biopsy can be held liable. A nurse or physician assistant who conducts an inadequate initial assessment and fails to bring critical findings to the physician’s attention can be held liable.
Hospitals themselves can be held liable under two theories. Vicarious liability holds the hospital responsible for the negligence of its employees. Apparent authority, established by the Illinois Supreme Court in Gilbert v. Sycamore Municipal Hospital, extends this liability to independent contractors when the hospital creates the reasonable impression that the physician is a hospital employee. Direct institutional liability holds the hospital responsible for its own negligence, such as maintaining inadequate staffing levels, failing to implement systems for communicating critical test results, or failing to ensure that follow-up on abnormal findings actually occurs. When a diagnostic error results from a system failure rather than an individual cognitive error, the hospital’s institutional negligence is often the primary target of the claim.
Unlike many states, Illinois does not impose caps on damages in medical malpractice cases. The Illinois Supreme Court struck down damage caps as unconstitutional in the 2010 Lebron v. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital decision, holding that the legislature does not have the authority to limit a jury’s determination of fair compensation. This means that if your diagnostic error case goes to trial, the jury is free to award whatever amount it believes is appropriate for your economic losses, your pain and suffering, your lost quality of life, and any other damages supported by the evidence.
The damages in a diagnostic error case depend entirely on the nature and severity of the harm caused by the delay. In many cases, the damages are substantial because diagnostic errors tend to cause the most harm in the most serious conditions, precisely the situations where time is most critical.
Economic damages include all past and future medical expenses attributable to the diagnostic error, meaning the additional treatment you required because the condition was not caught sooner. They include lost wages for time missed from work, and lost earning capacity if the delayed diagnosis resulted in a disability that affects your ability to earn a living going forward. In cases involving permanent disability, economic damages may include the cost of a life care plan covering future medical needs, home modifications, assistive devices, and caretaking services for the remainder of your life.
Non-economic damages compensate for the human cost of the error. Pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, and the disruption to your personal relationships are all compensable. In wrongful death cases arising from a fatal diagnostic error, the surviving family members can recover damages for their loss of companionship, grief, and the financial support the deceased would have provided.
Illinois juries have demonstrated a willingness to hold physicians and hospitals accountable for diagnostic errors with significant monetary awards. A few recent examples illustrate the range.
In 2024, a Cook County jury awarded $41 million to an attorney who suffered a catastrophic stroke due to mismanagement of his blood-thinning medication. The healthcare providers failed to monitor his Coumadin dosage with appropriate blood testing, and the resulting stroke left him with paralysis and severe cognitive deficits requiring 24-hour care. He can no longer practice law or function independently.
Also in 2024, a jury returned a $6.35 million verdict for a 56-year-old man whose doctor failed to investigate clear indicators of coronary ischemia. Seven months after the test results that should have prompted further evaluation, the patient was hospitalized in cardiac shock and required a heart transplant that significantly shortened his life expectancy.
In 2024, a $3 million verdict was awarded to a patient at Advocate Sherman Hospital who presented to the emergency department with headaches, dizziness, and tremors. The emergency physician diagnosed a migraine and discharged the patient. Two days later, the patient was found to have suffered a stroke, resulting in permanent brain damage.
In 2023, a $40 million verdict was returned for a professional landscaper whose doctors failed to properly evaluate a persistent cough and elevated blood pressure, missing the signs of a stroke that caused catastrophic injury. And in another 2023 case, a $14 million verdict was awarded for a 19-year-old initially seen at a clinic who was misdiagnosed before a life-threatening condition was identified too late.
These are not outlier results. They reflect the reality that diagnostic errors in serious conditions cause devastating harm, and Illinois juries understand that.
Diagnostic error cases are different from surgical error cases or medication error cases in several important ways. In a surgical error case, the negligent act is usually identifiable and discrete: the surgeon cut the wrong structure, left an instrument inside the patient, or operated on the wrong side. In a diagnostic error case, the negligence is a thinking failure, which is inherently more subtle and more difficult to explain to a jury.
This is where the cognitive science described earlier becomes essential. A skilled plaintiff’s attorney does not simply argue that the doctor got the diagnosis wrong. They reconstruct the diagnostic process step by step, identifying the specific point where the doctor’s reasoning departed from the standard of care. They show the jury the information that was available to the doctor, the differential diagnosis that should have been considered, the tests that should have been ordered, and the conclusions that a reasonable physician would have reached. They then identify the cognitive error, whether it was premature closure, anchoring, confirmation bias, or another pattern, and explain in plain language how that error derailed the diagnostic process.
This approach transforms the case from a battle of competing medical opinions into a concrete, understandable narrative about a doctor who stopped thinking too soon. Juries can relate to that. Everyone has had the experience of jumping to a conclusion and being wrong. The difference is that when a doctor jumps to a conclusion, someone can die.
The concept of differential diagnosis is central to virtually every diagnostic error case. Differential diagnosis is the systematic method that doctors are trained to use for working through a patient’s symptoms. The physician begins by gathering information through the patient history, physical examination, and initial test results. Based on that information, they generate a list of possible diagnoses, ranked from the most likely to the most dangerous. They then systematically work through the list, ordering tests and evaluating results to rule conditions in or out, until they arrive at the most probable diagnosis.
The key principle is that dangerous conditions must be ruled out before a benign diagnosis can be accepted. A doctor who tells a patient with chest pain and shortness of breath that they have anxiety without first ruling out pulmonary embolism, heart attack, and other potentially fatal conditions has failed to follow the differential diagnosis method. A doctor who tells a patient with a severe headache that they have a migraine without ruling out subarachnoid hemorrhage or stroke has committed the same error.
In the courtroom, the differential diagnosis standard gives your medical expert a structured framework for explaining exactly where the defendant physician’s reasoning went wrong. The expert can walk the jury through the list of conditions that should have been considered, explain which tests would have identified the correct diagnosis, and demonstrate that the defendant’s failure to follow this standard methodology is what allowed the dangerous condition to go undetected.
Research shows that 71.2 percent of diagnostic errors associated with malpractice claims occur in ambulatory settings, meaning emergency departments and outpatient clinics, rather than in hospitals. Within those settings, the patterns differ. Emergency departments see a disproportionate share of missed vascular events and infections, where the time pressure and high patient volumes create conditions ripe for cognitive errors. Outpatient clinics see a disproportionate share of missed cancers, where the challenge is recognizing early warning signs during brief office visits and ensuring appropriate follow-up.
The emergency department environment is a particularly fertile breeding ground for diagnostic error. Physicians are making rapid-fire decisions under extreme time pressure, often with incomplete information. They are managing multiple critically ill patients simultaneously. Shift changes create handoff vulnerabilities. The cognitive load is enormous, and the conditions that promote premature closure, anchoring, and other biases are ever-present. A survey of diagnostic errors in emergency rooms found cognitive factors present in 96 percent of cases. The most common were overconfidence at 22.5 percent, confirmation bias at 21.2 percent, availability bias at 12.4 percent, and anchoring bias at 11.4 percent.
Primary care offices present a different set of challenges. The physician typically has 15 to 20 minutes per patient. The vast majority of complaints are benign. The cognitive default is to expect common conditions, and that expectation creates the base rate neglect and availability biases that cause rare but serious conditions to be overlooked. A primary care physician who sees dozens of patients a day with coughs, headaches, and back pain has to actively resist the statistical pull toward benign diagnoses in order to catch the one patient whose cough is actually lung cancer.
Radiology plays a central role in modern diagnosis, and radiology errors play a correspondingly central role in diagnostic error litigation. Approximately 75 percent of malpractice lawsuits filed against radiologists relate to diagnostic imaging errors. These errors fall into two categories: perceptual errors, where the radiologist fails to see an abnormality that is present on the image, and cognitive errors, where the radiologist sees something but misinterprets its significance.
Perceptual errors account for approximately 60 to 80 percent of radiology diagnostic errors. The most well-known perceptual error is called satisfaction of search, which occurs when a radiologist identifies one finding on an image and then stops looking for additional abnormalities. The phenomenon has been dramatically illustrated by the so-called gorilla experiment, in which researchers inserted a gorilla figure into a chest CT scan. Eighty-three percent of radiologists who were focused on searching for lung nodules looked directly at the gorilla and failed to see it.
Communication failures are the third most common cause of malpractice against radiologists, after diagnostic errors and procedural complications. When a radiologist identifies a critical finding, the standard of care requires more than simply including it in a written report. The American College of Radiology practice guidelines mandate direct, nonroutine communication with the referring physician for urgent or unexpected findings. When a radiologist buries a critical finding in a lengthy report and makes no effort to ensure it reaches the clinician who needs to act on it, the radiologist has breached the standard of care regardless of how accurately the finding was described in the report itself.
No. Medicine involves inherent uncertainty, and some conditions are genuinely difficult to diagnose even when a physician exercises reasonable care. A diagnostic error becomes malpractice when the physician failed to follow the accepted standard of care in reaching their diagnosis, and that failure caused you harm. If a competent doctor in the same specialty would have reached the correct diagnosis under the same circumstances, and the delay caused your condition to worsen, you likely have a viable claim.
The distinction requires medical expert analysis. An unfortunate outcome occurs when the doctor did everything right but the disease progressed anyway. A diagnostic error occurs when the doctor missed something they should have caught, whether through cognitive error, failure to order appropriate tests, or failure to communicate results. The only way to know which applies to your situation is to have your medical records reviewed by a qualified expert. That is one of the first things we do when evaluating a potential case.
Multiple defendants are common in diagnostic error cases. Each physician who had an opportunity to identify your condition and failed to do so can be held independently liable. This includes primary care physicians, emergency room doctors, specialists, radiologists, and pathologists. Illinois law allows you to pursue claims against all responsible parties simultaneously.
Potentially, yes. Under the apparent authority doctrine established by the Illinois courts, a hospital can be held liable for the negligence of independent contractor physicians if the hospital held the physician out as its own and the patient reasonably relied on that impression. Additionally, if the diagnostic error resulted from a systemic failure such as inadequate staffing, deficient communication protocols, or the absence of a reliable follow-up tracking system, the hospital may be directly liable for its own institutional negligence.
Generally, two years from the date you discovered or should have discovered the injury, with an absolute four-year repose period from the date of the negligent act. For children, the deadline is the later of eight years from the date of the error or the child’s 22nd birthday. There are important exceptions for federally funded facilities, where the deadline may be shorter. Do not delay in consulting an attorney, because these deadlines are strictly enforced.
At DeSalvo Law, we handle diagnostic error cases on a contingency fee basis. That means you pay nothing upfront, and we do not collect a fee unless we recover compensation for you. The costs of medical expert review, record retrieval, and litigation expenses are advanced by our firm and repaid only out of a successful recovery.
The majority of diagnostic error cases are resolved through settlement negotiations before trial. However, we prepare every case as if it is going to trial, because the strength of your preparation is what drives the value of any settlement offer. I have tried more than 30 cases to jury verdict. I am a graduate of Gerry Spence’s Trial Lawyer’s College and The Edge program, both of which are among the most selective and intensive trial advocacy programs in the country. If the insurance company will not offer fair compensation, we are fully prepared to take your case to a jury.
First, get the correct medical treatment you need right now. Your health is the priority. Second, obtain copies of your complete medical records from every provider involved. Third, contact a qualified medical malpractice attorney as soon as possible. Evidence can be lost, memories fade, and filing deadlines do not wait. At DeSalvo Law, we offer a free consultation where we will review the facts of your situation and give you an honest assessment of whether you have a case. Call 312-500-4500.
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I have spent 27 years fighting for people who were harmed by the negligence of others. I know what it feels like to be on the wrong end of a system that is not designed to protect you, because I watched my own father go through it. That experience shapes every case I take.
Diagnostic error cases require an attorney who understands both the medicine and the law. They require someone who can read medical records, identify the cognitive and systemic failures that led to the error, and translate that understanding into a compelling case for a jury. They require access to top-tier medical experts who can provide the certificate of merit opinion and testify at trial. And they require a trial lawyer who is not afraid to go to court when the insurance company refuses to offer fair compensation.
I have that combination of skills and experience. I have tried more than 30 jury trials. I have trained with some of the best trial lawyers in the country. I handle cases on a contingency fee basis, which means my financial interests are aligned with yours. And I believe that when a doctor’s diagnostic failure causes you serious harm, you deserve a lawyer who will fight for you with everything he has.
If you or someone you love has been harmed by a diagnostic error, call me. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. And if I cannot help you, I will tell you that honestly and try to point you in the right direction. That is how I practice law.
Call DeSalvo Law at 312-500-4500. Available 24/7/365. Hablamos Español.
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Scott DeSalvo founded DeSalvo Law to help injured people throughout Chicago and surrounding suburbs. Licensed to practice law in Illinois since 1998, IARDC #6244452, Scott has represented over 3,000 clients in personal injury, workers compensation, and accident cases.
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