According to a study published in the March 11, 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, misdiagnoses accounts for an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 hospital deaths per year and tort claims for diagnoses that are missed, wrong, or delayed are nearly twice as common as claims for medication errors.
In the study, David Newman-Toker, MD, PHD, and Peter Pronovost, MD, PHD, attempted to throw the blame for most of there errors on “System Failures” rather than on individual medical doctors who lack the training
or skill to make correct diagnoses.
“Moving away for a model that chastises individual physicians to one that focuses on improving the medical system as a whole could offer big payoffs for improving diagnostic accuracy as well as the cost effectiveness of care,” said Newman-Toker, assistant professor of neurology at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine and the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Because diagnostic errors can be tricky to track to their roots, Pronovost, an expert on breaking down complex medical problems, says more research is needed to understand and find patterns in the origins of such errors.
In the meantime, however, the death toll from diagnostic errors will be added to the already staggering numbers of injuries and deaths caused be medication errors, estimated at 1.5 million.
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