More and more people are broadening their idea of what constitutes appropriate treatment for health conditions. Alternative medicine practices are growing in popularity for a number of reasons: distrust of conventional medicine; a desire to focus on promoting wellness rather than treating illness; a desire for more natural treatments; or simply increased awareness and availability of various options.
“Alternative medicine” is an umbrella term for non-mainstream medical treatments, such as treatments offered outside of conventional medical facilities or by practitioners who are not medical doctors (MDs), doctors of osteopathy (DOs), or physician’s assistants, nurse practitioners, or nurses working in coordination with an MD or DO.
Some common forms of alternative medicine include:
The phrase “alternative medicine” suggests that these and other practices are being used instead of more conventional medical treatment such as pharmaceutical treatment, surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy.
Sometimes non-mainstream techniques are used in conjunction with conventional medicine, like when someone with a back injury attends physical therapy and takes pain medicine, but also receives acupuncture treatment. When non-mainstream treatment is used alongside conventional treatment, it is referred to as “complementary medicine.”
Alternative or complementary medicine can offer benefits under some circumstances. It may have no effect in others, and in some cases, the treatment may actually cause the patient harm. That may not be because the treatment is inherently harmful, but because it was administered incorrectly, such as chiropractic neck manipulation that causes a stroke.
Because alternative medicine and treatments are not regulated like conventional medicine, however, there are some purported treatments that are inherently dangerous. One such treatment is black salve, which some alternative practitioners recommend as a skin cancer treatment. In reality, it is a corrosive paste that can cause burning, scarring, and even tissue death (necrosis).
In reality, any alternative medical treatment has the potential to be dangerous if its use causes a patient to delay seeking conventional medical treatment. If a patient puts off seeking mainstream treatment for too long, they may find that it is too late for conventional medical care to be effective.
If you are a patient who has sought out alternative medical treatment and been harmed by it, what recourse do you have? Can you sue a provider of non-mainstream treatment for medical malpractice? Probably not—but that doesn’t mean that you cannot successfully sue them. Read on to find out what we mean.
To understand why it may not be possible to sue an alternative medicine practitioner for medical malpractice, it’s helpful to think about what is involved in a medical malpractice case. In order for a jury to find that a doctor has committed medical malpractice, it must determine that the doctor has violated the applicable standard of care. The standard of care is, in essence, what a reasonable doctor, similarly situated, would have done under the same circumstances.
Many practitioners of alternative medicine are not medical doctors, so technically, they would not be sued for medical malpractice. And in other fields of care, the “standard of care” is often less well-defined than it is in medicine. As a result, it can be difficult to establish that a certain practitioner violated the standard of care.
Some types of alternative medicine, such as chiropractic and acupuncture, have established standards for practice. If a practitioner violated those standards, and a patient suffered harm as a result, the practitioner could be liable for acupuncture malpractice or chiropractic malpractice. The less clear the standard of care is, however, the more difficult it is to prove the elements of professional malpractice.
Even if an alternative medicine provider cannot be sued for professional malpractice, they may be able to be sued for ordinary negligence—that is, acting in a way that a reasonable person would not have acted, and causing injury to someone else that resulted in damages. In the black salve example above, a reasonable person would not instruct someone else to avoid conventional care and treat their skin cancer with a substance that is known to be corrosive.
As mentioned above, non-mainstream treatments and therapies can be genuinely helpful in some cases. For instance, clinical studies have suggested that acupuncture in addition to conventional recommendations is more effective in treating non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) than the conventional recommendations alone.
The best place to begin is often with your own physician. If you are uncomfortable discussing a non-mainstream treatment with your doctor, ask yourself why. If you are afraid they will discourage you or shoot the idea down, that may be a signal that you know on some level the treatment is suspect (or that you need a new doctor with whom you feel more comfortable).
If you have already undergone alternative medical treatment and suffered some kind of injury, you should speak to an attorney who handles medical malpractice and similar cases. A medical malpractice attorney can help you evaluate whether you might have a claim for some type of professional malpractice or ordinary negligence. To learn more, or to schedule a consultation, contact The Fraser Firm.
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