A recent podcast from the Harvard Medical community's medical malpractice insurer, CRICO (Risk Management Foundation), featuring foremost authority on prostate cancer, Dr. Marc Garnick, provides critical validation for the core issues driving medical negligence claims here in Ireland. The discussion clearly identifies that the most significant risks to both primary care clinicians and patients stem not from complex surgical procedures, but from fundamental failures in communication and documentation.
The findings from CRICO's malpractice data confirm that the two largest categories of clinical negligence allegations for primary care physicians are:
Failure to diagnose
Delay in diagnosis
Dr. Garnick and Dr. Germak highlighted that delayed diagnosis is a top risk area, with the most common final diagnoses within these cases being cancer, specifically prostate, lung and breast cancer in the US.
The Cost of Undocumented Care
This data directly reinforces Whelan Law’s stance that a delay in recognising critical symptoms is one of the most devastating breaches of Patient Safety. The podcast reveals that the breakdown often occurs in the patient-physician discussion regarding screening tests, such as the Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test.
Dr. Garnick noted the pervasive "he said-she said" conflict in malpractice cases: physicians guarantee they discussed the pros and cons of screening, while patients and their families often swear the discussion never occurred. This lack of clear record-keeping turns an easily managed clinical decision into years of anxiety and litigation.
Whelan Law’s Advocacy
This study provides vital insight into the challenges underpinning delayed diagnosis claims in Ireland. It highlights that:
Transparency is the First Line of Defence: Robust, standardised documentation is essential for accountability and protects both the patient and the healthcare provider.
The Patient’s Voice Must Be Documented: The failure to record a patient’s decision regarding screening is a failure of informed consent.
Systemic Support is Lacking: Physicians often cite a lack of time for these critical discussions, highlighting the need for better institutional support, such as educational guides and mandatory documentation tools (templates), to eliminate these easily preventable errors.
Whelan Law is committed to ensuring that these lessons learned from international malpractice data are applied in Ireland. We advocate for a healthcare system where clear communication is non-negotiable and where simple, effective procedures are implemented to eliminate the systemic failures that tragically lead to delayed cancer diagnosis and preventable patient harm.