Misdiagnosis: The Stats
It isn’t always clear when symptoms appear that there’s a specific cause. However, we count on healthcare professionals to provide the right diagnosis. When they fail, the consequences could be tragic.
Each year, an estimated 795,000 Americans are misdiagnosed, and as a result, die or are disabled, according to a study published in BMJ Quality & Safety. Specifically, there are 371,000 deaths and 424,000 people find themselves permanently disabled. The study, done by research teams at Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical institutions, established estimates based on known error rates in diagnosing specific diseases.
On average, 11 percent of medical problems are misdiagnosed. For certain diseases, such as spinal abscesses, that number could be as high as 62 percent. Approximately three out of four misdiagnoses are related to heart events (like a heart attack), infections, or cancer. Stroke is the number one condition that is misdiagnosed, followed by sepsis, pneumonia, blood clots in veins, and lung cancer.
If providers could reduce errors by 50 percent, they would reduce deaths and disabilities by 150,000 annually, noted the researchers. They noted that these errors represent a public health crisis, yet facilities are not funneling the resources needed to reduce preventable harm.
Misdiagnosis and missed diagnoses happen more often than you may think. If you suspect that you or a loved one is a victim of a medical mistake at a hospital or doctor’s office, contact a top Philadelphia attorney for misdiagnosis cases. In the last few years, almost every teaching hospital in the city of Philadelphia has paid 8-figure verdicts and settlements to clients of Tom Duffy.