Diagnostic mistakes don’t always happen in dramatic ways. In our experience, they often look like:
- Repeated visits to urgent care or primary care where symptoms are treated as “not serious yet,” but the condition worsens.
- Imaging or lab results that are acknowledged late, routed to the wrong team, or not tied to the patient’s reported symptoms.
- Cross-system handoffs—for example, when a patient is evaluated at one facility and then referred elsewhere—where follow-up is missed or delayed.
- Automated triage/documentation steps that shape what gets ordered next, what risks are flagged, and what gets communicated.
Frederick patients commonly move through a mix of local providers and regional systems. That makes documentation and communication especially important—because the legal question is often not just what diagnosis was made later, but what should have been recognized earlier based on the information available at the time.


