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Telemedicine has opened new avenues for convenient medical care, but it also introduces risks of malpractice when diagnoses go wrong. In Florida, “telemedicine malpractice” refers to negligence by a healthcare provider during a virtual visit that causes patient harm. This could mean a missed diagnosis, improper treatment, or other failures that would be unacceptable in an in person setting. Florida law holds telehealth providers to the same standards as traditional doctors, and patients retain their legal rights if substandard virtual care leads to injury. This informational guide explains common telehealth negligence issues, how Florida’s malpractice laws apply to remote care, and what steps a patient can take if they suspect a telemedicine related error.
Common Forms of Negligence in Telehealth
While telehealth offers convenience, certain diagnostic errors and care lapses have emerged as common forms of negligence in virtual care. The most prevalent issue involves misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis, where doctors miss critical signs without hands on examination. Subtle symptoms like skin discoloration, faint rashes, or slight breathing irregularities prove difficult to assess via webcam. Conditions requiring physical exams or tests, including infections, fractures, or neurological issues, often get mistakenly dismissed as minor problems. Research shows over 70% of telemedicine malpractice claims involve diagnostic errors, making this the primary risk area for virtual healthcare providers.
Virtual visits sometimes skip the thorough intake process standard in office visits, leading to providers failing to review complete records and patient history. Telehealth doctors might not access full medical charts or rely solely on patient memory for history, creating dangerous gaps. This oversight leads to missed allergies, medication interactions, or overlooked prior conditions. Prescribing drugs without reviewing patient records causes dangerous interactions or improper treatment that could have been prevented with proper documentation review. Technology and communication breakdowns present another significant challenge in remote care delivery. Glitches in audio or video, poor internet connections, or software bugs interfere with clear communication between doctor and patient. Choppy video feeds prevent doctors from seeing important symptoms like rashes or hearing muffled coughs that signal serious problems. Miscommunication becomes more likely when nonverbal cues get lost in transmission, with patient hesitation or confusion going unnoticed. These technical issues result in incomplete assessments and misunderstandings that raise error risks substantially.
Prescription errors occur when telehealth doctors prescribe medications remotely without a complete picture of patient health. Limited access to vital signs, current weight, or existing medications leads to mistakes including drug interactions or dosage miscalculations. Florida telehealth law restricts certain prescriptions, particularly Schedule II controlled substances, which generally cannot be prescribed via telemedicine except in specific situations like psychiatric care or hospice treatment. Inadequate follow up and continuity of care compound these problems when providers fail to arrange proper monitoring after virtual consultations. Some telemedicine services operate as one off encounters with no system to check patient progress or notify them of lab results. When telehealth doctors don’t advise in person exams or fail to follow up on worsening symptoms, patient conditions can deteriorate unchecked. Missing opportunities to follow up on abnormal test results or not instructing patients to seek in person care turns manageable issues into serious complications requiring emergency intervention.
Lack of informed consent for virtual limitations represents another crucial area of negligence. Patients need clear information about what telemedicine can and cannot adequately handle. When providers don’t explain video consultation limitations or fail to advise when urgent symptoms require ER visits or physical exams, patients might not realize they need more direct evaluation. Failing to obtain patient informed consent to telehealth or advise when in person visits become necessary constitutes negligence under Florida law. Each of these failures amounts to negligence when they fall below the care that a reasonably careful provider would give in similar circumstances. Telehealth may differ in format, but expectations of diligence remain identical to clinic or hospital standards.
Florida’s Standard of Care for Telemedicine Visits
Under Florida law, medical professionals must meet the same standard of care in telemedicine as they do in person. The Florida Telehealth Act (Florida Statutes §456.47) explicitly requires telehealth providers to practice in line with the “prevailing professional standard of practice” for an in person provider of the same specialty. A Florida doctor diagnosing a patient over video faces the same level of competence and judgment requirements as if that patient were sitting in their office. This equal standard principle forms the foundation of all telemedicine malpractice claims in our state.
License and scope requirements demand that telehealth providers treating Florida patients must be licensed in Florida or officially registered as out of state telehealth providers while operating within their permitted scope of practice. An out of state physician who isn’t authorized in Florida not only violates state law but also could be considered per se negligent. Florida’s telehealth regulations ensure remote care gets delivered by qualified professionals held to Florida’s standards. Courts in Florida evaluate telemedicine malpractice cases just as they would traditional ones, with no relaxed standard for virtual care. Treating someone via webcam provides no excuse for subpar care quality or medical judgment.
Factors courts consider include whether providers took adequate history, followed proper medical protocols for virtual exams, and recommended in person visits for thorough evaluation when necessary. When symptoms clearly warrant hands on exams or imaging, prudent telehealth doctors should direct patients to urgent care or office visits rather than relying purely on video consultation. Florida law allows telehealth providers to evaluate and treat patients via telemedicine without initial in person exams, as long as evaluations remain sufficient for accurate diagnosis. The critical word “sufficient” means providers must gather enough information through video, discussion, and remote tools to meet care standards. Failing to ask key questions or recognize when physical exams or tests become necessary violates expected standards. Telehealth law mandates providers maintain medical records for telehealth encounters just as they would for in person visits, documenting observations, advice, and actions taken. Poor documentation or ignoring important patient history in telemedicine visits becomes evidence of negligence in malpractice cases.
Physicians generally must obtain patient consent for treatment, including consent to treat via telehealth when applicable. While Florida’s statute doesn’t spell out separate telehealth consent forms, best practices require patients acknowledge format limitations. Healthcare providers must comply with HIPAA privacy rules during telehealth visits just as in person, using secure, encrypted platforms and ensuring confidentiality. Providers using non secure apps or conducting consults where others can overhear breach patient privacy obligations. Florida doesn’t water down malpractice standards for virtual care under any circumstances. Negligent acts over telemedicine such as careless misdiagnosis or failure to follow guidelines face judgment against the same benchmark of acceptable practice as if they occurred in exam rooms. Telehealth providers must exercise sound medical judgment, recognize when virtual care becomes insufficient, and uphold all professional duties despite the digital medium.
Pre Suit Requirements in Florida Malpractice Cases (Expert Affidavit & Notice)
Florida has strict pre suit requirements for medical malpractice claims, and telemedicine cases receive no exceptions. Before patients can formally sue healthcare providers for malpractice including telemedicine malpractice, they must complete a multi step pre litigation process designed to verify claim merit. Florida law (Fla. Stat. §766.203) requires patients and their attorneys to conduct pre suit investigations of cases through good faith efforts. This means obtaining all relevant medical records and having qualified medical experts review the facts thoroughly. The expert must be a healthcare professional with similar credentials to the provider in question and provide written, sworn opinions that negligence likely occurred.
This expert affidavit or certificate of merit should state the expert believes care fell below standard of care and caused injury. Without this affidavit, lawsuits cannot proceed; filing malpractice suits in Florida without supporting expert opinions leads to dismissal. The requirement aims to filter out frivolous claims by ensuring medical professionals have vetted allegations before litigation begins. After securing favorable expert opinions, patients through counsel must serve Notice of Intent to Initiate Litigation on each prospective defendant including doctors, hospitals, and telehealth platforms before filing in court. This written notice outlines malpractice allegations and typically accompanies expert affidavits or summaries plus relevant medical records.
Once notice gets mailed, a 90 day countdown begins during which defendants and their insurers must investigate claims and decide response strategies. They may request informal discovery through information exchange, consult their own experts, and engage in settlement talks. Florida encourages using this window to explore settlement or mediation options before formal litigation. No lawsuits can be filed during the 90 days, and by period end, providers must respond in writing either rejecting claims, offering settlements, or proposing arbitration. If they reject or do nothing by 90 days, patients then become free to file lawsuits in court. Critical compliance with these pre suit steps prevents cases being thrown out on procedural grounds. The pre suit process also tolls the statute of limitations clock during that 90 day investigation period, giving parties time to negotiate without losing the right to sue.
Technical requirements such as finding the right medical expert demand careful attention since Florida law mandates experts be in the same specialty and meet experience criteria. Most patients engage malpractice attorneys to navigate this process successfully. Completing pre suit investigations thoroughly strengthens cases and often leads to resolution without trial, but if not resolved, patients will have met prerequisites to take telemedicine malpractice claims to court.
Burden of Proof and Causation Challenges in Remote Care
Like all medical malpractice plaintiffs, telehealth patients in Florida bear the burden of proof to establish their cases. This involves proving two main elements: that healthcare providers were negligent by deviating from the standard of care, and that this negligence directly caused injury or worsened conditions. Both elements present special challenges when alleged malpractice occurred via remote care delivery systems. Proving breach of the standard of care requires showing telemedicine providers failed to act as reasonably careful providers would under similar circumstances. In practical terms, expert witnesses compare what telehealth doctors did or didn’t do with what should have been done given the situation.
For example, standard of care for patients reporting chest pain over telehealth would be immediately recommending in person evaluation or ER visits. If telehealth doctors instead sent patients away with advice to “drink fluids and rest” without ruling out heart attacks, experts could testify this fell below accepted standards. Remote context complicates this analysis since defense might argue certain exam findings weren’t possible to obtain via video. However, experienced experts will point out steps providers could have taken even remotely like asking detailed questions, observing via camera, or directing urgent in person tests. Florida courts expect plaintiff experts to articulate how telehealth provider choices were unreasonable given situations. Lack of physical presence doesn’t excuse negligence; if proper courses involved ordering tests or escalating to in person care, telemedicine doctors must do so.
Establishing breach may require overcoming juror or judge assumptions that “online care is inherently limited” by showing competent providers would have managed those limitations more appropriately. Proving causation in telemedicine context means linking negligence to specific harm outcomes. This often becomes the toughest part of malpractice cases overall. In telehealth scenarios, causation might involve proving delay or error from virtual visits led to worse outcomes than if proper care had been given initially. If telehealth misdiagnosis caused critical conditions like appendicitis, cancer, or stroke to go untreated for crucial hours or days, patients must show this delay resulted in additional injury such as appendix rupturing, cancer progressing, or stroke causing greater damage due to lost time.
The “what if” nature of this inquiry can be complex since defense may argue even with appropriate care, outcomes might have been identical. Telemedicine doctors who misdiagnosed appendicitis as indigestion might claim by consultation time, surgery would have been needed regardless. Patient tasks involve using medical evidence and expert testimony to demonstrate more likely than not, harm was exacerbated by missed diagnosis. Florida doesn’t require absolute certainty, but experts must convince courts that provider errors probably made significant differences in outcomes. Remote care presents evidentiary challenges too since unlike office visits with nurse notes, vital sign readings, and tangible observations, telehealth visit records could be sparse. Records might only contain doctor written summaries and perhaps video recordings if they exist, though most often no recordings exist unless patients took screenshots or notes.
This can lead to disputes about what symptoms were discussed or how clear instructions were. Patients should document everything to help bridge this gap. Additionally, establishing what doctors should have done may require creative evidence use like showing guidelines or consensus that certain symptoms warrant in person exams. The burden remains on patients to prove negligence and causation. Telemedicine adds wrinkles to both: demonstrating breach when some traditional exam steps weren’t possible, and tying bad outcomes to that breach amid intervening factors. With strong expert witnesses and thorough evidence, these challenges can be overcome, but they underscore why not all poor telehealth experiences are actionable malpractice. Mistakes must be egregious enough to breach duty, and they must have caused real harm not just inconvenience. Cases meeting those criteria can be pursued, but they require careful legal and medical analysis to satisfy Florida’s proof standards.
Statute of Limitations for Telemedicine Malpractice in Florida
Patients must be mindful of Florida’s statute of limitations for medical malpractice, which applies equally to telemedicine cases. A statute of limitations sets the legal deadline for filing lawsuits. In Florida, you have 2 years from the date you knew or should have known of malpractice and injury to file a lawsuit. This “discovery rule” means the clock starts either when malpractice incidents occur or when you later discover they caused harm, whichever comes later. If telehealth doctors misdiagnosed you in January 2025 but harm and error only became apparent when correctly diagnosed in March 2025, the 2 year window might count from March 2025.
Regardless of discovery, Florida imposes a 4 year outer limit from the date malpractice actually occurred. This statute of repose means if negligent telemedicine consultations happened on January 1, 2021, you generally cannot sue after January 1, 2025 even if you didn’t discover issues until later. The repose acts as a hard cutoff in most cases. Florida makes limited exceptions to these time limits when healthcare providers fraudulently concealed malpractice preventing discovery. Law extends deadlines allowing up to 7 years from incident dates in such cases. Additionally, if patients were minors under age 8, the statute of repose doesn’t bar lawsuits brought on children’s behalf before their 8th birthday. This acknowledges small children might not communicate injuries effectively. Even in these exceptions, suits still must be filed within 2 years of when issues were discovered.
If telemedicine malpractice incidents result in patient deaths, Florida’s wrongful death statute, which is also typically two years, governs time limits for deceased families to bring claims. For telemedicine errors, figuring out when clocks start can be tricky. Often virtual visit dates are malpractice dates, but sometimes patients only realize errors later. It’s wise to err on the side of caution and assume earliest possible dates to avoid missing deadlines. The mandatory pre suit process described earlier can toll the clock for 90 days while undergoing investigation phases, but you must still send notices of intent before statutes run out. Because time limits face strict enforcement, patients suspecting malpractice should consult attorneys promptly to calculate deadlines. Missing statutes of limitations usually means losing rights to sue entirely, no matter how valid claims appear.
Liable Parties in a Telemedicine Malpractice Case
When thinking about medical malpractice, we usually think of physician responsibility. In telemedicine, treating providers including doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants indeed remain primary parties responsible for any negligence. However, virtual care can involve multiple actors, and liability may extend to others beyond individual clinicians. Licensed professionals who provided remote consultations become the most obvious liable parties. If they misdiagnosed you, failed to follow standards, or otherwise were negligent, they can be sued just like any doctor in office settings. In Florida, this includes not only medical doctors but also nurse practitioners or physician assistants if they acted as primary caregivers in telehealth visits. Each practitioner faces standards of their own profession and specialty requirements.
Sometimes telehealth providers are part of larger practices or supervised by someone else. Physician assistants on video calls might be under physician supervision legally, or telehealth services might be run by hospitals or clinics. In such cases, supervising doctors or institutions could be vicariously liable for negligence of their employees or agents. Florida law holds employers responsible for employee negligence in scope of duties through respondeat superior doctrine. If hospital telemedicine programs gave you substandard care, you might have claims against both individual providers and hospitals. This becomes important for ensuring entities with adequate insurance or funds exist to pay judgments.
Many patients use third party telemedicine platforms through smartphone apps or services connecting them to remote doctors. These companies can sometimes bear liability as well. If platforms failed to properly vet healthcare providers allowing unlicensed or unqualified individuals to give medical advice, or set policies contributing to errors such as severely limiting visit time or not forwarding patient records, companies might share fault. Some telehealth companies advertise certain standards of care; if they fell short by not providing promised “24/7 physician follow up,” there could be liability basis. However, many platforms have extensive consent forms and terms of service aiming to shield themselves. Determining platform liability often requires legal analysis of their role whether they’re merely tech intermediaries or providing healthcare services. In Florida, if platforms employ providers directly instead of them being independent contractors, it’s easier to tag companies with vicarious liability for provider negligence.
In rare cases, causes of telemedicine errors might trace back to faulty technology like malfunctioning diagnostic apps, corrupted data transmission, or medical devices used at home giving incorrect readings. If software glitches or device defects lead to patient harm, makers of those products could face liability under product liability or negligence principles. If apps were supposed to transmit symptoms to doctors but scrambled or omitted critical information, app developers might share blame. Similarly, if remote monitoring devices like connected blood pressure cuffs failed and misled clinicians. These scenarios remain less common, and often tech issues still require clinicians to have acted unreasonably. Healthcare is a system where sometimes multiple breakdowns combine to cause harm.
If your telehealth experience involved support staff such as triage nurses who took calls and advised before speaking to doctors, or pharmacists who dispensed wrong medications from tele prescriptions, those individuals could also be liable if their negligence contributed to injuries. Florida’s malpractice law defines “health care provider” broadly including nurses and pharmacists among others, so lawsuits can include any licensed provider whose substandard care played roles. In telemedicine malpractice cases, it’s not unusual to have multiple defendants. Each party’s portion of liability would depend on facts and Florida’s rules on comparative fault. The bottom line: physicians and other caregivers remain on the front line of liability, but companies and institutions behind telemedicine services can also be held accountable if their negligence contributed. If you’re a patient considering action, attorneys will typically investigate all potential parties ensuring anyone who played roles in substandard care and who might have insurance coverage gets included, so you have the best chance of full recovery for damages.
HIPAA and Virtual Care: Privacy & Standard of Care Considerations
Telehealth not only raises issues of medical negligence but also concerns about patient privacy and data security. Healthcare providers must adhere to HIPAA regulations during virtual care just as strictly as during in person visits. When medical visits occur via video or phone, providers bear responsibility for ensuring conversations remain private. This means clinicians should conduct sessions in secure, private locations not in busy rooms where others can overhear and verify electronic transmission remains encrypted and secure. Florida’s telehealth statute explicitly requires medical records from telehealth including video or audio recordings if made stay confidential and comply with privacy laws.
If telehealth providers violate confidentiality by discussing health information where others can intercept it or using non secure platforms that get hacked, it could breach HIPAA. Such privacy breaches result in government penalties, and while HIPAA itself doesn’t give patients direct malpractice claims, Florida patients might pursue state law privacy claims for improper disclosure of medical information. In any case, it reflects failure to meet professional standards. With virtual care explosion, data breaches have become more common; in 2021, 45 million people were affected by healthcare data breaches representing huge jumps from prior years. Telehealth providers must remain vigilant about cyber security to protect patient data effectively.
Providers should use HIPAA compliant telehealth platforms with encrypted, secure applications specifically meant for telemedicine. During COVID 19 public health emergencies, regulators temporarily allowed some flexibility like using Zoom or FaceTime even if not fully HIPAA compliant, but generally healthcare practices must use proper secured systems. These platforms often have business associate agreements in place and robust security features. If doctors for convenience used unsafe apps and patient information was intercepted or recorded by unauthorized parties, that’s a serious issue. Concerns also exist about telehealth websites embedding trackers or sharing data with third parties for advertising without patient consent. Such practices violate privacy laws since under HIPAA, identifiable health information shouldn’t be disclosed to unrelated parties without consent. Patients should be informed about who will have access to their data. Telehealth providers or companies compromising patient privacy could face legal trouble and erode care standards expected in maintaining confidentiality.
Beyond privacy, informed consent in telehealth includes educating patients on how virtual visits work and their limitations. Providers should inform patients if any telehealth aspects might affect care quality, such as inability to fully examine issues over video requiring in person exams. Patient consent to treatment via telemedicine should be obtained either in writing beforehand or verbally at consultation start. Making sure patients understand emergency procedures and how follow ups will be handled forms part of quality telehealth care. Florida doesn’t have separate statutory forms for telehealth consent, but standard medical consent principles apply with some Florida providers using special telehealth consent forms as precautions. Lack of informed consent could be an issue if patients would have chosen in person visits had they known telemedicine limitations but weren’t given that choice.
Healthcare providers must adapt practices ensuring virtual care remains as effective and safe as possible. This means paying extra attention to communication by asking patients to clarify or repeat information ensuring understanding since visual cues might be missing. It also means possibly leveraging technology to approximate exams, such as asking patients to shine lights on rashes, palpate abdomens under guidance, or use at home devices if available. Standard of care might entail being even more cautious over telehealth: if there’s any doubt, erring on the side of ordering tests or directing patients to urgent care rather than taking “wait and see” approaches that might be okay in person with direct exams. Florida’s law acknowledges telehealth providers may perform evaluations via telehealth without prior physical exams, but it’s implied evaluations must be thorough in context of what’s possible remotely.
Part of standard of care also involves record keeping documenting what was observed and advised just as comprehensively as in person visits. This helps continuity of care and ensures if patients need follow up, next providers have all necessary information. Telehealth providers should have protocols for when patients on video calls are in crisis. If patients show signs of strokes or heart attacks during virtual visits, providers must quickly direct them to emergency services and ideally stay on lines until help arrives. Similarly, if telehealth doctors are prescribing, they need to follow both standard practices and telehealth specific laws like verifying patient identity, using e prescriptions properly, and not prescribing certain controlled substances unless allowed. Compliance with these rules forms part of expected standard of care in virtual practice; deviating from them can be not only regulatory violations but also evidence of negligence.
HIPAA and other standards apply fully to telemedicine. Patients have rights to expect telehealth visits will be private and secure, and care will meet usual medical standards adapted to virtual formats. Providers who ignore privacy protocols or provide substandard care just because visits are online breach their obligations. For patients, it’s wise to use secure channels provided and be candid with providers if you feel something isn’t being addressed due to virtual format, speak up. For providers, the watchword remains: treat telemedicine patients with same diligence as if they were in your clinic, and protect their data with same rigor as paper charts under lock and key.
Examples of Diagnostic Errors in Telemedicine
Real world cases illustrate how telemedicine malpractice can unfold. One notable Florida example involved a patient with severe abdominal pain who opted for telehealth consultation. The remote doctor diagnosed indigestion and advised over the counter remedies. The patient’s pain worsened over the next two days; eventually, an in person hospital visit revealed acute appendicitis requiring emergency surgery. The patient pursued a malpractice lawsuit alleging that reasonably careful telehealth providers should have recognized red flag symptoms and urged immediate in person exams or imaging which likely would have caught appendicitis before it turned into life threatening emergencies. This case highlights how missed diagnoses via video can have serious consequences. Earlier interventions could have prevented complications, so telemedicine providers were potentially liable for delays in proper treatment.
Another scenario commonly discussed involves missed stroke symptoms. Suppose patients have sudden onset of dizziness, slurred speech, and confusion and connect with doctors through telemedicine apps. If doctors attribute it to minor issues like dehydration without doing proper neurological assessments, patients could actually be suffering strokes. Delaying hospital care in such cases can mean differences between recovery and permanent disability. Telehealth doctors must know when symptoms are suspicious for strokes or any emergencies and not hesitate directing patients to ERs. If they fail to do so and patients are harmed, that could be malpractice. Experts note conditions like stroke and cardiac events are among high risk diagnoses that telehealth providers must handle with extreme care since misdiagnoses of these accounted for roughly 45% of telehealth related malpractice claims in one 2021 analysis.
Patterns have emerged in telemedicine diagnostic errors throughout the industry. Respiratory infections during the pandemic were often evaluated via telehealth. While many were minor, cases of serious pneumonia or even COVID complications weren’t recognized early enough through video screens. Similarly, dermatologic issues might be misjudged if image quality proves poor with dangerous rashes downplayed. Pediatric cases pose challenges too: fussy babies or toddlers might have serious infections, but via telehealth providers cannot physically examine ears or listen to lungs, and if they assume it’s just mild viruses without in person checks, more serious illnesses could go untreated.
What these examples underscore is that telemedicine malpractice often involves providers underestimating situations due to limitations of remote evaluation. The best telehealth clinicians compensate for these limitations by erring on the side of caution ordering tests, asking patients to come in when in doubt, or scheduling quick follow ups. When they don’t, errors happen. As patients, if you ever feel telehealth diagnoses aren’t matching your intuition of how sick you are, you should seek second opinions or in person care promptly. From legal perspectives, if significant harm resulted from telehealth provider misjudgment, you may have grounds to hold them accountable just as if misdiagnosis occurred face to face.
How Patients Can Document Failures and Pursue a Claim
If you believe you’ve been a victim of telemedicine malpractice through diagnostic errors or other negligence during virtual visits that caused harm, taking proactive steps becomes important. Building strong cases requires good documentation and following proper channels. Start gathering all records and communications related to your telehealth encounter immediately. This includes any emails or texts confirming appointments, copies of chat messages or after visit summaries, and screenshots if you took any during video calls. Write down dates and times of virtual visits and names of providers. If telehealth platforms provided you access to visit transcripts or recordings, save those as well. Make journal entries or timelines of exactly what happened: what symptoms you reported, what doctors said or advised, any technical problems that occurred, and how calls ended.
Also keep track of what happened afterward such as going to ERs two days later and being diagnosed with specific conditions. These contemporaneous notes can be very powerful evidence. Florida law gives patients rights to obtain their medical records, so request official telehealth medical records from providers or platforms. Those records may contain doctor notes which will be evidence in cases either supporting your account or highlighting discrepancies. The more hard evidence you have including prescriptions, test orders, and messages, the easier it becomes to show what went wrong. Small details matter since malpractice cases often involve identifying series of small missteps that added up over time.
If you haven’t already, seek in person medical attention for conditions or injuries in question. Your health comes first, and additionally, medical records from follow up treatment will be key evidence. Those records might explicitly state there was delayed diagnosis or that conditions were far progressed, which can support claims that telehealth visits should have caught problems. Be sure to tell subsequent doctors exactly what telehealth providers told you or failed to tell you, as this will be documented in those records. For instance, “Patient was seen via telemedicine two days ago and told it was indigestion” appearing in ER notes about your appendicitis becomes strong evidence. Furthermore, current treating doctors might indicate in their medical opinions that earlier interventions could have improved outcomes essentially serving as expert viewpoints on causation though separate experts will ultimately be needed for legal purposes.
Telemedicine malpractice cases are complex, combining standard medical issues with evolving telehealth standards. It’s highly advisable to speak with experienced malpractice attorneys ideally ones familiar with telehealth cases as soon as you can. Lawyers will help evaluate strength of claims and guide you through Florida pre suit requirements like obtaining expert affidavits and sending notices of intent. They will also know which expert specialties to consult to review cases. Many malpractice attorneys offer free initial consultations, so you can get professional opinions on whether you have viable cases. If you decide pursuing claims, attorneys will handle procedural steps and deadlines allowing you to focus on health. Given necessity of expert opinions and difficulty for laypersons to secure them independently, having legal counsel becomes almost prerequisite to moving forward.
Besides medical records, preserve any physical evidence if applicable such as if mis prescribed medications caused harm, save medication bottles. Also, be cautious about discussing cases on social media or with others since defense could potentially use your statements against you. Keep documentation and communications with attorneys confidential. Florida’s presuit process involves informal discovery, so you will eventually share information with defendants as required by law, but it’s best doing that in controlled, lawyer guided ways. With attorney help, ensure Notice of Intent gets served within statute of limitations periods. Florida’s requirement of 90 day notice periods means you need to act in timely fashion so you don’t run out of time. Attorneys will draft notice letters, attach expert affidavits or summaries, and send them to all relevant parties including doctors, hospitals, and telehealth companies. Once that’s done, be prepared to wait 90 days and possibly engage in pre suit mediation or discussions. Use this time to further bolster evidence and be ready in case matters proceed to lawsuits after 90 days.
By thoroughly documenting what happened and following proper legal steps, you give yourself the best chance at successful claims. Telemedicine malpractice cases can be won since they often hinge on clear documentation of what providers did wrong and strong expert testimony that even via video, providers should have done better. As patients, you don’t have to be experts in medicine or law; you just need to recognize when something was seriously amiss with your care and then enlist right professionals to help prove it. Florida’s laws exist to protect patients from substandard medical treatment whether delivered in exam rooms or over computer screens. If you’ve been hurt by telehealth mistakes, you have rights to seek accountability and compensation for damages you’ve suffered.
Attorney Bio: Jorge L. Flores, Florida Bar No. 53244, has been representing families in Miami Dade for over 30 years.
Disclaimer: This overview is general information, not legal advice. Deadlines and procedures can change based on facts and parties. For guidance on your specific situation, contact a Florida medical malpractice attorney.