On Tuesday, New York Governor Cuomo signed Lavern’s Law, which moves the starting date of the statute of limitations to the date of the discovery of the misdiagnosis instead of the date when misdiagnosis occurred.
Cancer patients who have been misdiagnosed by New York doctors or hospitals will now have a fairer chance to be compensated.
The original version of Lavern’s Law proposed to start the statute of limitations from the date of the discovery for all medical malpractice cases, but a compromise had to be found with the Senate GOP. Despite being a restricted version, the passage of this law is excellent news for many cancer patients who were misdiagnosed but weren’t able to get compensation because the misdiagnosis was discovered too late.
Assembly bill sponsor Helene Weinstein said that while she would have preferred to do the broader bill that encompassed all victims of medical malpractice, the more limited version is a “good first step.”
New York is one of the only 6 States to have the statute of limitations running from the date of the malpractice, even if the patient doesn’t know about it. The statute of limitation is 15 months to sue public hospitals and 2 and half years to sue private physicians or private hospitals. Many patients whose doctor failed to diagnose malignant tumors or failed to diagnose cancer find out they were misdiagnosed after the statute of limitations ran out. Now these misdiagnosed patients and their families will have a chance to be compensated for the medical error.