In a smaller city like Keene, many people receive care across multiple settings—primary care, urgent care, the emergency department, imaging centers, and specialists. Diagnostic delay often happens at the handoffs:
- A provider orders testing but the follow-up isn’t completed or properly communicated
- Imaging or lab results don’t trigger the next diagnostic step
- A referral is made, but the patient isn’t clearly guided on urgency
- Symptoms persist, yet the workup stops short of what a reasonable clinician would do
If you’ve been living with the question, “Shouldn’t someone have caught this sooner?”, the legal analysis starts with that exact point—what information was available at the time, and what a reasonable provider would have done next.


