Evidence-Based Medical-Legal Resources for Attorneys.

Ideally at intake, before you accept a case. An early medical review clarifies whether the alleged breach is defensible, whether causation is provable, and whether the damages you're anticipating are medically consistent with the injury. Waiting until after discovery closes forces you to litigate on assumptions that a physician might have corrected in an afternoon. A short pre-suit consult typically costs less than one deposition and can prevent the far larger cost of pursuing a case that a jury will reject.

Yes. Pre-suit review is one of the highest-value engagements a medical consultant offers. I read the available records against the applicable standard of care, identify what supports and undermines the theory of liability, flag additional records worth subpoenaing, and give a candid oral opinion on merit. Nothing is written unless you specifically request a written summary, which keeps the analysis outside of discovery.

For an initial review, send the encounter at issue plus the immediate before-and-after: the admission or office visit where the alleged breach occurred, any imaging or labs referenced in that encounter, the discharge summary, and the first post-event follow-up. For pediatric cardiology cases, include the fetal or neonatal records, prior echocardiograms, cardiology consult notes, and any operative reports.

The standard of care is what a reasonably prudent physician of the same specialty, in the same or similar community, would have done under the same circumstances at the time of the encounter. It is not defined by outcome, hindsight, or best practices published years later. My analysis anchors to peer-reviewed literature and specialty guidelines that were available on the date of care, cross-referenced against the four corners of the record.

A medical consultant works behind the scenes to educate counsel, evaluate merit, review records, help formulate deposition questions, and stress-test opposing experts. Consulting work is generally protected by the work-product doctrine and not discoverable. An expert witness is disclosed to the opposing side, issues a Rule 26 report (or its state equivalent), sits for deposition, and testifies at trial.

Yes, in a consulting capacity. My general pediatrics and pediatric cardiology board certifications define where I testify as a retained expert witness, but medical consulting spans every specialty because the analytic method is the same: identify the standard, apply it to the record, and assess causation. For cases outside my testifying specialties I can review the medicine, identify the questions that matter, and — through an established network — connect you with vetted, board-certified experts in the correct specialty for disclosure.

Once a breach of the standard of care is identified, causation asks whether that breach — more likely than not — caused the injury alleged. Causation analysis is appropriate whenever the mechanism of injury is medically complex: delayed diagnosis, missed test results, medication errors, post-operative complications, or any case where the defense will argue the outcome would have occurred regardless.

Deposition prep is where a retained expert earns their fee. We work through the record together so the testimony is precise: which opinions are supported by the record, which are supported by the literature, and which are outside my scope. We anticipate the cross-examination — prior inconsistent statements, alternative explanations, guideline exceptions, and the classic hypothetical traps.