Johns Hopkins Researchers Determine 795,000 Americans Harmed from Diagnostic Errors Annually
Clinical laboratories can play a critical role in helping doctors to order correct tests and interpret the results
Nearly 800,000 Americans die or are permanently disabled each year due to diagnostic errors. That’s according to research conducted at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine that found most misdiagnoses are due to cognitive errors on the part of the treating physicians. Many diagnoses typically begin with–and are often achieved through—clinical laboratory testing. For that reason, the range of diagnostic errors identified in this study will interest pathologists and lab managers.
Of course, many types of diagnostic errors have nothing to do with lab tests. That said, the research team noted that some diagnostic errors take place when physicians do not pay attention to test results that indicate a patient is not doing well, or do not understand the significance of the test results. There are also examples where doctors order the wrong lab tests for patients’ symptoms.
The Johns Hopkins study findings were published in the journal BMJ Quality and Safety titled, “Burden of Serious Harms from Diagnostic Error in the USA.” The research team determined that only 15 diseases “accounted for 50.7% of total serious harms” and nearly 40% of those harms involved just five medical conditions:
These can be narrowed down even further to just three categories, the researchers noted in BMJ Quality and Safety. They are:
- Major vascular events,
- Infections, and
- Cancers.
In an interview with CNN Health, lead author of the study David Newman-Toker, MD, PhD, a neurology professor at Johns Hopkins and Director of the Division of Neuro-Visual and Vestibular Disorders, said “These are relatively common diseases that are missed relatively commonly and are associated with significant amounts of harm.”
“We focused here on the serious harms, but the number of diagnostic errors that happen out there in the US each year is probably somewhere on the order of magnitude of 50 to 100 million,” neurologist David Newman-Toker, MD, PhD (above), professor and Director of the Division of Neuro-Visual and Vestibular Disorders at Johns Hopkins, who led the study, told STAT. “If you actually look, you see it’s happening all the time.” Clinical laboratories play a key role in ensuring correct understanding of the tests they perform. (Photo copyright: Johns Hopkins University.)
Changes to Healthcare Risk Management
According to Newman-Toker, the Johns Hopkins study is “the first population health estimate of the number of patients seriously harmed. It also provides more information about the distribution of the diseases that are involved,” Relias Media reported.
The sheer volume of this issue is not lost on the researchers. Newman-Toker likens it to measuring an iceberg.
“You dive below the surface, and you measure the circumference of the iceberg, and [you] will say, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s really big down here.’ And then you go five more feet, and you measure the circumference, and it keeps getting bigger. By the time you’re 20 feet below the surface, you realize this is huge,” he told Relias Media.
Newman-Toker believes his team’s research offers an opportunity for physicians and healthcare risk managers to better understand how exactly to prioritize their resources and focus their efforts. “In terms of how it informs their day-to-day decision-making, it really is rebalancing some of the efforts a little bit in the direction of conditions that are more common and more commonly misdiagnosed than perhaps indicated by simply looking at claims data,” he noted.
Vascular events can present in symptoms typical of much less serious conditions. Strokes, for example, can present with vague symptoms such as a headache or dizziness. This is similar to heart attacks, which can just present as chest pains. However, heart attacks are far less misdiagnosed than strokes because of a decades-long effort to eradicate those diagnostic errors.
“Diagnostic errors are errors of omission,” Daniel Yang, MD, an internist and Program Director for the Diagnostic Excellence Initiative at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, told CNN Health. “The question is: Could [the outcome] be prevented if we had done something differently earlier on? Oftentimes, that’s a judgment call that two doctors might disagree on.”
Physicians and risk managers can work together to determine the best course of action to identify vague symptoms and prevent the deaths and serious injuries that can come from diagnostic errors.
Economic Cost of Misdiagnosis
Misdiagnosis also comes with a huge economic burden. William Padula, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics at USC Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, laid out the cost burden for STAT News.
“A patient comes into the ED with a headache or dizziness, and they get told it’ll go away, and then they go home. And then a week later, you find out that they [had] a stroke,” he explained. “By then, the stroke has compounded so much that what could have been addressed in the moment … for $10,000 now becomes a $100,000 issue. … So, there’s a margin of $90,000 that has been added to the US health system burden because of the misdiagnosis.”
Padula estimates that the total cost for these misdiagnoses could come to as much as $100 billion on the healthcare system.
What’s the Solution?
How can physicians avoid misdiagnoses and keep their patients safe? Newman-Toker suggests that physicians consult with other doctors. “I believe that the quickest way to solve the diagnostic error problem in the real world would be to construct approaches that basically rely on the ‘phone a friend’ model,” he told STAT News.
“This doesn’t mean that the patient should have to seek a second opinion, but rather that providers should make it standard practice to consult with a colleague before providing a diagnosis or dismissing a patient,” STAT News added.
Clinical laboratory professionals should note that while these misdiagnoses do not take place in the lab, doctor may order incorrect tests for patients by misreading their symptoms. Thus, clinical pathologists and lab scientists can play a critical role in helping doctors to order the correct tests for their patients and accurately interpret the results.
—Ashley Croce
Related Information:
Burden of Serious Harms from Diagnostic Error in the USA
Burden of Harm from Diagnostic Error Still High
Misdiagnoses Cost the US 800,000 Deaths and Serious Disabilities Every Year, Study Finds
