Legally Reviewed and Edited by: Terry Cochran

Published on: June 25, 2025

Urgent care facilities provide convenient access to medical care for minor conditions. However, like other healthcare settings, things may go wrong due to negligence. If you’re a victim of negligence at such a facility, you can file an urgent care malpractice lawsuit to protect your rights and recover compensation for the damages you have suffered. Since these cases can be complicated, working with medical malpractice attorneys in Michigan can make it easier to navigate the process.

Can You Sue an Urgent Care Center for Malpractice?

Yes. You can sue an urgent care center for medical malpractice, like other healthcare providers; urgent care centers have a duty to provide care that meets acceptable legal and medical standards. When they breach this duty and a patient suffers harm as a result, the patient can file a medical malpractice lawsuit to recover damages.

For a valid malpractice claim against an urgent care facility, you must prove the following elements:

• The urgent care provider had a duty of care towards you
• The provider failed to meet the acceptable standard of care (breach of duty)
• The provider’s breach of duty directly caused or worsened your injury
• You suffered physical, emotional, or financial harm due to the injury

6 Common Urgent Care Lawsuit Types

Malpractice claims against urgent care facilities usually include some of these six common lawsuits:

Misdiagnosis

Misdiagnosis occurs when a healthcare provider incorrectly identifies your condition or gives you a clean bill of health when you have a medical problem requiring treatment. In urgent care settings, this might happen when:

• Early symptoms of serious conditions are dismissed as minor ailments
• Providers fail to consider more serious diagnoses that could explain your symptoms
• Insufficient examination or questioning leads to incorrect conclusions

For example, chest pain might be attributed to muscle strain when it’s actually an early sign of heart problems, or severe headaches could be dismissed as tension headaches when they indicate a more serious neurological issue.

Delayed Diagnosis

Delayed diagnosis occurs when a healthcare provider fails to diagnose a condition on time, despite the patient exhibiting signs of the condition or seeking medical treatment. Delayed diagnosis can lead to issues when:

• Early treatment could have prevented the condition from worsening
• The delay allows a treatable condition to become chronic or more severe
• Time-sensitive conditions require immediate intervention

Failure to Diagnose

Complete failure to diagnose means the medical provider entirely missed a condition that was present and should have been identified. This can involve:

• Primary diagnosis failure: Missing the main condition entirely, such as failing to recognize diabetes symptoms and not ordering appropriate blood tests
• Secondary diagnosis failure: Correctly identifying one issue but missing related complications, like diagnosing diabetes but failing to recognize that the patient is becoming acidotic and at risk of diabetic coma

Failure to diagnose can have severe consequences, especially for life-threatening conditions.

Failure to Treat or Refer

Sometimes, urgent care providers correctly diagnose a condition but fail to provide appropriate treatment or refer patients to the necessary services. This type of malpractice might involve:

• Providing inadequate treatment for a correctly diagnosed condition
• Failing to refer patients to specialists when the condition exceeds urgent care capabilities
• Not recognizing when a patient needs immediate emergency room care
• Inadequate follow-up instructions or failure to ensure proper continuity of care

Equipment Malfunction

Modern urgent care centers rely on a range of diagnostic equipment and laboratory processes to provide accurate diagnoses. Equipment failure or misuse can harm patients by providing incorrect results, which may lead to misdiagnosis.

The urgent care facility itself may be at fault for medical errors resulting from equipment malfunctions, rather than individual doctors.

Worsening of Existing Conditions

You may file a malpractice claim against an urgent care center if your condition worsens after treatment. Worsening conditions can occur when the facility:

• Administers medications to patients with known allergies
• Provides treatments that are contraindicated for the patient’s condition
• Fails to take proper medical histories before treatment
• Inadequate monitoring of the patient during treatment

Key Differences Between Urgent Care and ER Responsibilities

Urgent care centers provide same-day treatment services for minor, non-life-threatening conditions. Emergency rooms, on the other hand, are equipped to handle a range of emergency medical conditions, including life-threatening situations.

Urgent care centers typically do not operate 24 hours a day, unlike emergency rooms, which are open 24 hours and are legally required to provide emergency healthcare to patients.

While both differ in their scope of service, they are required to provide reasonable medical care to patients, meaning you can also sue emergency rooms for negligence and malpractice. Both facilities must:

• Communicate their limitations to patients
• Recognize when conditions exceed their capabilities
• Promptly transfer patients to appropriate emergency care when necessary
• Maintain proper equipment and staffing for their intended scope of practice

Patients also have responsibilities in choosing appropriate care. If you arrive at an urgent care center with obvious signs of a heart attack or stroke, the center cannot be expected to provide the same level of emergency care as a hospital ER. However, they should recognize the emergency and facilitate immediate transfer to appropriate care.

What Makes a Strong Malpractice Case Against Urgent Care

Building a successful medical malpractice case against an urgent care center requires demonstrating that the care you received fell below acceptable medical standards and directly caused you harm. Strong cases typically involve:

• Clear documentation of the medical services provided and the missed diagnosis
• Expert medical testimony from healthcare professionals who can explain how the standard of care was breached
• Clear evidence that you suffered an injury, worsening of the condition, or additional medical expenses due to the substandard care
• The condition should have been within the urgent care center’s ability to diagnose or treat, or they should have recognized the need for referral.

When to Contact Medical Malpractice Attorneys

If you suspect you’ve been the victim of urgent care malpractice, consulting with experienced medical malpractice attorneys in Michigan can help you understand your legal options. Consider seeking legal consultation if:

• Your condition worsened significantly after urgent care treatment
• You later discovered that your urgent care diagnosis was incorrect
• You suffered complications that could have been prevented with proper care
• You incurred additional medical expenses due to inadequate urgent care treatment
• You have ongoing health problems that you believe stem from urgent care errors

Medical malpractice cases are complex and require specialized knowledge of both medical and legal issues. An experienced attorney can review your medical records, consult with medical experts, and help determine whether you have a valid claim.

Time limits apply to medical malpractice cases, so it’s important not to delay in seeking legal advice if you suspect malpractice occurred.

Find an Urgent Care Malpractice Attorney in Michigan

Urgent care centers can make mistakes that could have a significant impact on your health. If you were injured due to urgent care malpractice, speak with our compassionate, knowledgeable Cochran, Kroll, & Associates, P.C. attorneys.

At Cochran, Kroll & Associates, P.C., we are experienced attorneys specializing in personal injury and medical malpractice cases. Senior partner Eileen Kroll, a registered nurse, utilizes her healthcare knowledge to interpret medical records as a nurse attorney.

We can review your case, guide you through the process of filing an urgent care malpractice lawsuit claim, and help you understand your rights and legal options. Contact us today for a free, no-obligation consultation. Our contingency fee basis means we only get paid if we win your case, so there is no financial risk to you to get started. Contact our law firm today at 1-866-642-4529 to schedule your no-obligation, free case evaluation.

Disclaimer : The information provided is general and not for legal advice. The blogs are not intended to provide legal counsel and no attorney-client relationship is created nor intended.