A new report released by the Institute of Medicine and highlighted by the Washington Post, titled “Improving Diagnosis in Health Care,” notes that most Americans that go to the doctor will get a wrong or late diagnosis at least once in their lives, often with terrible consequences. Although this error plays a huge part in injury and malpractice, it has been relatively unstudied over the years (with the exception of one report put together in 2000–To Err Is Human). Although it is unknown how many total errors take place each year, the report’s authors estimate that these errors in medical diagnoses affect at least 12 million adults annually.
Why Has Errors In Medical Diagnoses Been Ignored For So Long?
Medical errors that often make it into the news often highlight the more rare and extraordinary errors– surgery on the wrong side of the body, instruments left in a patient’s body after surgery by mistake, etc.—even though errors in misdiagnosis are more frequent; they simply have not been measured and documented sufficiently. In addition, up until now, patient safety measures have largely been focused on error prevention in hospitals versus doctors’ offices.
Factors Involved
In a typical misdiagnosis, if one doctor makes a mistake, and a different doctor fixes that mistake, rarely does the latter report that mistake to the former in the form of feedback. In addition, diagnostic errors often involve more than one doctor—in reality, they can involve lab tests, several clinicians, and thousands of potential diagnoses.
In addition, there isn’t enough collaboration in general amongst clinicians and patients, and the health care system in general discourages transparency and often rather punishes people for disclosing errors in medical diagnoses. Health information technology was also cited as potentially contributing to error, as doctors’ offices transitioning to electronic health records can present its own set of challenges.
A Solution?
The diagnosis for improvement is even more dismal: researchers estimate that this issue will only increase with time as health care, in general, becomes more complex. Specifically, errors that are a part of the diagnostic process are even more difficult to track and measure than deaths due to medical errors because they are so frequently unreported and only later discovered (often) due to medical malpractice suits. Because of this challenge, the committee authors have noted that the proper solution requires a fundamental overhaul of the entire diagnostic process.
Have You Been Misdiagnosed? Contact our New Orleans Attorneys today.
If you have potentially suffered an injury as a result of a misdiagnosis, our legal team will fight to make sure that your medical bills are covered and that pain and suffering is compensated for. For more information about medical malpractice cases (such as the failure to diagnose a health problem or the delayed diagnosis of a health problem), be sure to contact our New Orleans, Louisiana personal injury lawyers today. Our entire team looks forward to meeting you in person and going over all of these matters in greater detail.
Photo Credit: CBS News