Dive Brief:
- A new analysis has concluded that at least one in every 20 adults seeking medical care in a US emergency room or community clinic may walk away with the wrong diagnosis.
- The analysis, which estimates that 12 million Americans a year could be affected by such errors, concludes that about 6 million of these errors could cause harm.
- The researchers say that the correct diagnosis could have been accurately detected by the information available.
Dive Insight:
Getting a good estimate of such errors is difficult, mostly because researchers don't all use the same definition from states. Patient safety expert and study author Dr. Hardeep Singh studied analyses of unusual patterns of return visits after primary care and according to Singh, his results are not surprising. Other patient safety experts have estimated that the number of potentially dangerous mistakes was in this range or even higher. Researchers are now working on the next step, which is to lower that number substantially.