A new study from the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute Center for Diagnostic Excellence estimates that possibly 795,000 people every year die or are seriously injured after being misdiagnosed. This is a staggering number, but it’s not surprising.
Diagnosing a patient correctly is an incredibly difficult task. Every day doctors have to make educated guesses on what conditions are causing patient symptoms with limited information. Anyone who has ever scrolled a page on WebMD knows that a common symptom like chest pain can be caused by something as benign as a common cold or as dangerous as a heart attack. This is precisely why we need doctors, we rely on their training and expertise to make the best decision for us. However, no amount of training or experience can make a person omniscient. While in most cases doctors will accurately diagnose a patient, there are times when that just isn’t possible with current knowledge and technology.
With that being said, there are steps that can be taken to mitigate the problem of misdiagnosis. One improvement that can be made is increasing the amount of time doctors spend with their patients. The more time a doctor spends with a patient the more time they have to accurately assess their symptoms and come to the correct diagnosis. Another improvement that can be made would be strengthening communication channels between providers. For example, this could be by making sure medical records are used properly and frequently updated. These simple changes could potentially have a large impact.
The unfortunate reality is that misdiagnosis will never be completely eliminated from our medical system. But that doesn’t mean we should do nothing about it, or that in every case it was inevitable. There are lots of instances where a doctor had every tool at their disposal to make the correct diagnosis, and they failed to do so. If such a scenario happened to you, and it caused you serious harm, then you might have a medical malpractice case. See our Cases We Handle page to learn more.
