Could Patient-Error Reports Cause Pathologists To Be Responsible for Other Providers’ Mistakes?
Who is responsible when a patient is misdiagnosed because the patient’s physician read a clinical laboratory test report incorrectly?
Could clinical pathologists be held responsible for medical errors caused by other providers? That’s a possibility under a proposal from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
AHRQ is seeking approval for a prototype of a new reporting system for medical errors, AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D., told The New York Times in a story published on September 22, 2012. “Currently there is no mechanism for consumers to report information about patient safety events,” she said.
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