How Communication Failures in Healthcare Can Lead to Medical Malpractice Claims

When healthcare professionals fail to communicate, medical malpractice claims can result. This communication breakdown can occur in a number of ways. Medical malpractice claims are predicated upon problems arising within one or more of the four Cs: Compassion, Communication, Competence, and Charting. It may be surprising to realize that a physician you trust needs to be trained to remember these essential aspects of healthcare, but what’s even more telling is how many providers fail to observe these basic functions. Failures in any of the four Cs can jeopardize patient safety, but communication is most frequently named a contributing factor in medical malpractice lawsuits.

One study on miscommunication and medical malpractice claims published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed communication failures as a leading cause of serious adverse events. Forty-nine percent of claims in the study cited miscommunication factors, reinforcing the strong correlation between inadequate communication and malpractice lawsuits.

While the 4Cs of medical malpractice seemed designed to protect physicians’ careers, prioritizing these elements of patient care can improve transparency and prevent negative outcomes. It’s up to physicians, nurses, and providers to streamline information hand-offs and exchanges, but patients who understand where failures occur can protect themselves from preventable adverse events.

Types of Communication Failures in Healthcare

A patient interacts with countless medical and non-medical staff from the point when they check in for an appointment or call an ambulance to the point when they are dismissed or discharged. All of these encounters require clear communication for diagnoses and treatment, and for after-care, which means any of these occasions presents the possibility of mistakes. When information isn’t delivered, is received too late, or is misinterpreted, the patient’s well-being may be at risk.

Miscues Between Healthcare Providers

Patients trust that an EMT will provide the ER doctor adequate information, and they also trust that the daytime care team will transfer necessary knowledge to the night shift. Unfortunately, data from the Joint Commission International suggests that inadequate handovers (also known as hand-offs or care transitions) are factors in 80% of all adverse events, including catastrophic errors.

Healthcare providers must prioritize information transfers to avoid critical miscommunications between care teams. If deteriorating vital signs aren’t communicated, the next provider may delay monitoring and fail to prevent a serious medical event. The patient’s worsened condition or loss of life constitutes malpractice due to the care team’s failure.

Charting is one of the 4Cs because adequate documentation helps prevent information gaps during transfers of care that can lead to medical malpractice events. Patient information must be recorded and interpreted properly and accurately. If a doctor verbally instructs a dose of 15mg and the nurse mishears this and records it as 50mg, the charting error puts the patient at serious risk of an adverse drug reaction.

Even if these are considered ‘mistakes,’ healthcare providers must uphold a standard of care that includes adequate dosing, treatment, and monitoring.

Doctor-Patient Communication Errors

Though the data suggests that most medical malpractice claims involve miscommunications between healthcare providers, errors in doctor-patient communication also contribute to this growing problem.

Patient rights in South Carolina and nationwide demand that providers educate individuals on treatments and procedures so that giving consent or denying care are informed processes. Doing this requires error-free doctor-patient communication that accommodates language barriers and health illiteracy. When a provider ignores a patient’s communication requirements, the person may opt into a procedure without agreeing to the risks, or deny care based on a misunderstanding. A person who experiences unexpected serious or permanent damage from a procedure may qualify for a malpractice claim based upon when a communication failure left them uninformed.

Clinicians, physicians, and nurses who incorporate Compassion and Competence from the 4Cs into their patient care can potentially prevent information gaps that create harmful medical malpractice events.

Providers can prioritize physician-patient communication and reduce opportunities for errors by:

• Empathizing with patients to build a trusting relationship where the individual feels safe to share their health concerns.
• Listening to patients carefully and thoughtfully to make informed diagnostics and treatments.
• Understanding non-verbal cues and using best practices for exchanging information in extreme or challenging situations.
• Recording medication allergies, health history notes, and symptoms to chart an accurate record of the patient’s health.
• Respecting patients’ rights to consent to or deny treatment by communicating the consequences of both stances and any alternative care options.

Technological Communication Failures

Medical facilities must maintain Health Information Technology (HIT) for patient record transmission and storage, which is often accomplished with electronic health records (EHR). Outdated or unreliable systems and improper training can lead to communication errors and serious adverse events. One study found moderate or severe harm in 80% of the EHR events analyzed.

When an access issue, network malfunction, or hardware failure delays information exchange, it introduces barriers to providers’ decision-making, causing misdiagnoses, failures to treat, medication errors, or other patient safety issues.

EHR may be the most prevalent source of technological communication failures, but telehealth, AI-driven tools, electronic surgical tools, and mHealth apps also contribute. Patients must understand how any of these system failures might explain—not justify—medical malpractice errors.

Investigating Injuries Caused by Faulty Healthcare Communication

Understanding how errors within physician-patient relationships, provider transitions, or technological systems lead to serious, injury-causing errors is only one aspect of a claim, and proving these failures were medical malpractice is not black and white. When individuals see a primary care physician, seek a second opinion elsewhere, and undergo specialized surgery, there are countless sources to investigate. And, calculating the damages for catastrophic malpractice claims is increasingly complex.

Before you give up and leave a physician’s actions unreported, speak to one of Bell legal Group’s medical malpractice attorneys for help. Share your story with our team to begin exploring your legal options today.