A:“Causation” is an important legal concept that means the negligent act of the healthcare provider must have caused (or contributed to) the injuries and damages claimed by the patient. Many cases are defended on the ground that there is no causal relationship between the claimed damages and the alleged negligence. Consider, for example, a case claiming negligent failure to diagnose lung cancer resulting in a delay of a year or more in treatment where the patient eventually died. The defense may contend that there was no causal relationship between the year’s delay and the death. The physician’s defense could be that the original cancer was not treatable in the first place, so the delay in starting treatment, while negligent, was of no causal consequence.