Anyone who deals regularly with modern medicine knows that getting an appointment, let alone a follow-up appointment, can be a challenge. Follow-up appointments help doctors and patients figure out what a person’s condition is and whether there are any complications, especially after surgery. Without these appointments, issues like infections and reactions may go unnoticed. In the worst scenarios, these can lead to life-changing injuries or death.
People often mistakenly assume that the failure to follow up with appointments falls on the patient. However, scheduling difficulties and specialist referrals are the main drivers of missed follow-up appointments. At some point, these failures by doctors, clinics, and hospitals do constitute a form of medical malpractice. If you believe you suffered an injury due to a lack of sufficient follow-up care, here is what to consider.
The Purpose of Follow-Up Appointments
Follow-up visits are part of the ongoing care for a variety of surgeries, treatments, and conditions. Doctors use follow-up appointments to check how well patients are healing and to chart their progress. If there is a problem that requires a change in treatment or an additional surgery, a follow-up appointment is the time to catch it.
Likewise, follow-up appointments allow doctors to assess the continuing need for certain prescription drugs. Some drugs lose their effectiveness with time. Others can be quite strong, and a doctor may want to get a patient off them before the effects become harmful. Without a follow-up appointment, there is no opportunity to make these needed corrections.
Patients with specialized needs particularly require follow-up care. An individual who has diabetes, for example, might have trouble with the healing process after surgery. If there are wound care issues surrounding a surgical site, the doctor can address those during subsequent appointments.
Also, the lack of symptoms is another reason that follow-ups are important. A patient might feel improvement while underlying issues are worsening. Cancer is a particular instance where the perception of wellness at specific stages of treatment can contrast significantly with the progression of the disease. A follow-up visit with a doctor after ending chemotherapy, for example, may be the only way to detect that the cancer is still progressing.
Follow-up care often encourages further recovery, too. Physical therapy is essential for range of motion and strength after many procedures. A person who didn’t have enough physical therapy following a knee, shoulder, or hip replacement might suffer reduced range of motion and significant pain.
How Injuries Arise from Missed Follow-Up Sessions
Medical malpractice injuries occur due to a variety of failures in medical follow-up. This can range from simply not meeting with the doctor to never getting necessary medical imaging scans. Without a follow-up, a nurse might never have the chance to draw blood and find out that a patient’s white blood cell count is completely off.
Even something as seemingly simple as a broken arm requires follow-up. A doctor needs to check whether the bone is healing properly. Without follow-up care, a standard medical occurrence can become a lifelong disability that leads to pain and dysfunction that might have otherwise been avoidable.
There are also the medical bills that come with eventually fixing what went wrong. In the case of the broken bone that healed poorly, a surgeon may eventually need to correct the condition. A relatively mainstream medical situation, a broken bone, then becomes a much more complicated and expensive surgery.
Follow-ups address a variety of possible complications that might arise over the course of care. Blood clots frequently form after operations, and follow-up appointments increase the odds of catching them. Some people develop heart problems following procedures. Scheduling follow-up care may be the difference between a full recovery and a life of disability or even death.
Dealing with the Consequences of Insufficient Follow-Up
If you believe that your medical situation called for more follow-up than occurred and that you were injured as a result, you do have the right to demand compensation. A medical malpractice lawyer will encourage you to take some steps.
Foremost, you should document when your appointments were. Even if there just seemed to be a notably long gap between appointments without anyone explicitly missing a session, track the dates and times. If your physician changed a scheduled date, note both the original and subsequent appointment times. Your attorney can talk with specialists and determine what a normal follow-up schedule for your condition should have been.
Be sure to collect all of the communications with your doctor and other parties. Make copies and give those copies to your lawyer. Evidence like blood work panels can often tell the story of what follow-up should have occurred versus what did not. No detail is too small. Organize the paperwork into folders and possibly a small cabinet so you can track all of it.
Collect all of your medical bills, including ones that might seem initially unrelated to your original condition. A person who starts experiencing infections after a surgery, for example, might not immediately understand the relationship between the procedure and their illness. Only once your attorney starts talking with specialists might it become clear what the pattern is that ties the surgery to your sickness.
Your doctor has a duty to ensure that you get sufficient care. This includes making sure there are follow-up appointments with the right people, including specialists like physical therapists or endocrinologists. It isn’t enough for your doctor to treat the immediate condition. Failing to schedule or keep follow-up appointments can hurt your recovery or even endanger your life.
You should know your rights in cases where poor follow-up practices may have harmed your health. If you believe you suffered an injury due to incorrect or no follow-up, an experienced medical malpractice lawyer like the attorneys at Thomas Law Offices can help you make sense of your legal options.
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Our Editorial Team are writers and experts in their field. Their views and opinions may not always be the views of Wellbeing Magazine. If you are under the direction of medical supervision please speak to your doctor or therapist before following the advice and recommendations in these articles.
