After you experienced injuries or complications from medical treatment or a procedure, you might pursue a malpractice claim against your provider to recover compensation for your harm and loss. However, some medical malpractice cases may involve a healthcare provider’s failure to obtain informed consent from their patient before performing a procedure. Understanding the requirements for informed consent in healthcare under New York law can help you assess whether you might have a malpractice case against your provider.
What Informed Consent Means in New York
Under New York law, a “lack of informed consent” refers to a healthcare provider’s failure to disclose to a patient alternative treatments and the reasonably foreseeable risks and benefits of a proposed treatment, as a reasonable healthcare provider would disclose under similar circumstances. These disclosures aim to provide patients with the necessary information to make a knowledgeable evaluation of their treatment options and an informed decision about how to proceed with treatment.
New York law limits patients’ rights to recover for medical malpractice based on a lack of informed consent to cases involving non-emergency treatments, procedures, or surgery, or an invasive diagnostic procedure.
In an informed consent medical malpractice case, a patient must show that their healthcare provider failed to disclose information that other reasonable providers would have disclosed under similar circumstances, that a reasonable person in the patient’s position would not have undergone the treatment or procedure had they received full disclosure, and that the lack of informed consent directly and proximately caused the patient’s injury.
How New York Courts Evaluate Informed Consent Claims
In medical malpractice cases, New York courts distinguish between negligence claims, which involve allegations of improper treatment, and claims of lack of informed consent, which arise from a healthcare professional’s failure to disclose the risks of a treatment or alternative treatments. Courts also evaluate lack of informed consent claims based on the “reasonable practitioner” and “reasonable patient” standard. For the reasonable practitioner standard, courts may examine whether other healthcare practitioners of similar training, experience, and specialization as the defendant practitioner would have disclosed other information to a patient under similar circumstances.
The reasonable patient standard evaluates the sufficiency of the practitioner’s disclosures from the patient’s perspective. Under the standard, a lack of informed consent may occur when a provider fails to disclose all relevant information about a proposed treatment that an objective patient would find material in making an informed decision about whether to agree to the treatment.
In many cases, healthcare providers obtain consent forms from patients. Although these forms do not automatically confer immunity for providers, they can provide critical evidence to demonstrate that a provider made a full disclosure of the risks associated with a proposed treatment and its alternatives, and that the patient understood the disclosure and consented to the procedure.
Defenses Commonly Raised by Healthcare Providers
Some of the most frequent defenses used by healthcare providers facing informed consent claims include:
- A risk was too remote or would not have caused serious harm
- A risk was too well-known by laypersons to require explanation
- The treatment occurred during a medical emergency, obviating the need for informed consent
- The patient would have consented to the procedure even with full disclosure
- The patient received a full disclosure and consented to the procedure
Contact a Medical Malpractice Attorney Today
When you suffer injuries or complications in a medical procedure for which your providers failed to advise you of all the risks, you may have a medical malpractice claim based on a lack of informed consent. Contact McCann Legal, PC today for a free, no-obligation consultation with a medical malpractice lawyer to learn more about the importance of informed consent in malpractice cases.