Missed diagnoses common in the doctor’s office
March 1, 2013Mon Feb 25, 2013 | Feb 26 (Reuters) – Missed or wrong diagnoses are common in primary care and may put some patients at risk of serious complications, according to a U.S. study. Mistakes in surgery and medication prescribing have been at the center of patient safety efforts, but researchers whose findings appeared in JAMA Internal Medicine said less attention has been paid to missed diagnoses in the doctor’s office. Because of how common they are, those errors may lead to more patient injuries and deaths than other mistakes, according to David Newman-Toker from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, who co-wrote a commentary on the study. “We have every reason to believe that diagnostic errors are a major, major public health problem,” Newman-Toker told Reuters Health. “You’re really talking about at least 150,000 people per year, deaths or disabilities that are resulting from this problem.” Read more