Diagnostic Errors Persist In Healthcare

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Most patients will receive at least one misdiagnosis over their lifetime.

Getting the proper diagnosis is an essential part of establishing the proper treatment in healthcare, but an Institute of Medicine report has found diagnostic errors persist across all healthcare settings, placing patients at risk.

The report, Improving Diagnosis in Health Care: Quality Chasm Series, is a continuation of IOM’s Quality Chasm Series and finds these errors harm “an unacceptable number of patients. Getting the right diagnosis is a key aspect of healthcare. It provides an explanation of a patient’s health problem and informs subsequent healthcare decisions.”

The report authors argue the occurrence of diagnostic errors has been largely ignored in the battle to improve the quality and safety of healthcare. This has had devastating results, and the report underscores that “urgent change is warranted to address this challenge. Improving the diagnostic process is not only possible, but also represents a moral, professional, and public health imperative.”

Improving diagnosis and reducing errors requires more effective teamwork among healthcare professionals, patients, and families; enhanced training for healthcare professionals; more emphasis on identifying and learning from diagnostic errors and near misses in clinical practice; a payment and care delivery environment that supports the diagnostic process; and a dedicated focus on new research, according to the study.

“This problem is significant and serious [yet] we don’t know for sure how often it occurs, how serious it is or how much it costs,” Dr. John Ball, of the American College of Physicians, chair of the committee that carried out the analysis told U.S. News and World Reports. He said the lack of evidence was one of the committee’s most “surprising” and distressing findings and more research is necessary into this pervasive problem.

Furthermore, as greater emphasis is placed on the ICD-10 transition, implementation of EHRs, and interoperability, healthcare providers need to collaborate to bring the issue of proper diagnosis to the forefront.

“It’s huge that diagnosis is finally getting the attention it deserves,” says Helen Haskell, co-chair of the patient committee at the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine, who reviewed a draft of the report. “There are lots of people who think our failure to tackle this is one reason why patient safety hasn’t progressed farther.”