PITTSBURGH -- Thursday afternoon, a third lawsuit was filed against Magee-Womens Hospital. It comes on the heels of two lawsuits filed in the last two months by doctors who alleged that Magee used improper medical practices.

But the lawsuit is different, because in this case, the plaintiff is a patient, a woman who developed cervical cancer. She's alleging she wasn't properly diagnosed early enough.

The complaint, filed on behalf of Dona Lischner, of Pittsburgh, contains accusations similar to those in the two previous lawsuits against Magee.

Two previous lawsuits were filed by Dr. Kenneth McCarty and former Magee pathologist Dr. Susan Silver.

The new lawsuit alleges, similar to what the doctors alleged in their suits, that Magee-Womens Hospital created records that misrepresented that pathologists had evaluated specimens when they had not.

It alleges Magee "failed to properly process and/or misinterpreted... Lischner's Pap smear specimens which caused a delay in her treatment and resulted... carcinoma of the cervix" (or cervical cancer).

Lischner declined an on-camera interview, but the lawsuit lays out a timeline of her Pap smear results from 1996 to 2001, and alleges that Magee pathologists misinterpreted the cell pathology in the 1996 and 1997 specimens and failed to diagnose abnormal specimens in 1998 and 2000.

Lischner's cancer was eventually diagnosed and in December 2001 she underwent a total hysterectomy.

But the suit alleges that in 2003, during a review of patient slides, several of Lischner's early specimen reports were amended or corrected to correct the interpretations laid out in the original reports, and that all previous copies of her specimen reports were ordered to be destroyed.

Silver's lawsuit contains a hospital memo dated 1997 that she claims that outlines this policy of amended and corrected reports.

Channel 11 called Magee's attorney. He said he has not seen the Lischner suit and was not ready to comment.