Posted on 07/20/2023 6:57:08 AM PDT by Red Badger
Researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard Medical Institutions looked at 15 diseases and concluded that 371,000 Americans died and 424,000 were permanently disabled as a result of misdiagnoses.
About 795,000 Americans die or are permanently disabled every year due to misdiagnosed medical conditions.
A new analysis led by experts at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore looks more closely at diagnostic error and its impact.
"Prior work has generally focused on errors occurring in a specific clinical setting, such as primary care, the emergency department or hospital-based care," lead author Dr. David Newman-Toker, director of the Center for Diagnostic Excellence, said in a Hopkins news release.
"These studies could not address the total serious harms across multiple care settings, the previous estimates of which varied widely from 40,000 to 4 million per year. The methods used in our study are notable because they leverage disease-specific error and harm rates to estimate an overall total," he added.
The researchers, from Johns Hopkins and the Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard Medical Institutions, looked at 15 diseases and concluded that 371,000 Americans died and 424,000 were permanently disabled as a result of misdiagnoses.
About 75% of the serious harms happen in connection with vascular events, infections and cancers. In all, 15 diseases account for nearly 51% of the serious harms.
Five conditions -- stroke, sepsis, pneumonia, venous thromboembolism and lung cancer -- cause nearly 39% of total serious harms.
Across diseases, the overall average error rate was estimated at 11%, but the rate ranges widely -- from 1.5% for heart attack to 62% for spinal abscess. Stroke was the top cause of serious harm from misdiagnosis, found in 17.5% of cases.
Diseases with high error rates should be top priority targets for solutions, the authors said.
"A disease-focused approach to diagnostic error prevention and mitigation has the potential to significantly reduce these harms," Newman-Toker said. "Reducing diagnostic errors by 50% for stroke, sepsis, pneumonia, pulmonary embolism and lung cancer could cut permanent disabilities and deaths by 150,000 per year."
Johns Hopkins has already developed and started using solutions to address missed stroke cases, he said.
Solutions include virtual patient simulators to improve the skills of front-line clinicians, as well as portable eye movement recordings via video goggles and mobile phones to enable specialists to remotely assist clinicians in diagnosing stroke. They also include computer-based algorithms to automate parts of the diagnostic process and dashboards that measure performance and provide feedback on quality improvement.
"Funding for these efforts remains a barrier," Newman-Toker said. "Diagnostic errors are, by a wide margin, the most under-resourced public health crisis we face, yet research funding only recently reached the $20 million per year mark. If we are to achieve diagnostic excellence and the goal of zero preventable harm from diagnostic error, we must continue to invest in efforts to achieve success."
The study findings were published recently in BMJ Quality & Safety.
More information
The U.S. National Institutes of Health has more on stroke diagnosis.
Copyright © 2023 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Of course information about the ethnicity of the care providers who made these errors will not have been collected.
The people injured have no money, so the atty. needs a 110% assurance he will win (if he fronts the witness fees)
AMA 1, The people 0
almost a million?
we have 1 out of every 350 people killed or injured ? every year?
Whose ass do they pull these numbers out of?
No.
I don’t believe this figure.
Remember, studies are 50% bullshot from the gitgo.
Yes, I have initials after my name.
Given the tally by Johns Hopkins through their Coronavirus Resource Center was busy tallying the "millions," and given several recent articles to the effect that over-counting was prevalent through the "pandemic" years, one observes the above number an interesting stat. From the same entity that busied itself promoting the pandemic hysteria. To repeat: "About 795,000 Americans die or are permanently disabled every year due to misdiagnosed medical conditions."
The CDC says about 1 percent of the population dies off each year. One percent of 335 million is 3.35 million deaths a year. Normal.
Placing the "795,000 Americans die or are permanently disabled' into this frame of reference suggests that medicine today is riddled with errors. Or more pleasantly said, "misdiagnosed medical conditions," Gosh and golly. Safe and effective. And so on. Trust the science.
Meanwhile in retrospect, the WHO predicted 3.4 percent deaths per annum worldwide for the pandemic, and the actual after more than 3 & 1.2 years is 0.087 percent worldwide. Misdiagnosis all around. Hear any apologies for getting things so wrong? Not a one.....
One may correctly say then that "misdiagnosed medical conditions" are far more dangerous than a "pandemic." Medically, but not as yet politically.
Because suppression of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and promotion of remdesivir and drugged ventilation were "protocol" and never "misdiagnosed" medically.
I’m ready for my AI physician. Can’t be any worse than my own GP. He just reads graphs and algorithmic flow charts the same as AI. He doesn’t do any critical thinking and whatever you do don’t question or argue his mainline outdated FDA/AMA directed methods. I read up on the latest news and medical studies and try to reason with him to no avail. The last two doctors have injured my wife on different diagnoses. We could’ve successfully sued for malpractice but made a choice not to.
My father and my younger brother were both killed by medical mistakes while in a hospital. Nobody in my family has ever died by gunfire. Doctors are far more dangerous than firearms.
“Trust the science.”
I would blame the influx of third world “doctors” coming to America to practice their medical techniques on Americans.
A drop in the bucket once we’ve rid ourselves of the old, white guys in favor of the DEI crowd. It’ll be the Dark Ages era.
I would be very skeptical of that number but it does have the imprimatur of Johns Hopkins and Harvard.
“Flow chart medicine” is what I call it.
While there are some good Drs in the US, the vast number are average or worse.
They differ to recommendations from their pharma suppliers (personified by the short skirted reps they send to take everyone to lunch and supply gifts to the staff) and never do the basic study of the real problem.
And if you even mention that the research you did on the symptoms is in disagreement with their diagnosis, they will skoff at you or refuse to work with you any more.
Yet, they are entrenched in this country and it is near impossible to remove them or get them “defrocked”.
My grandmother died from several direct, very bad decisions by nurses and at least one doctor. She was in the hospital for a pretty harmless issue and agreed to let someone else take her surgery spot in the schedule. From that point on, they basically killed her, and she told them where the problem was they’d caused, but they just gave her morphine, and added to that, as their induced problem killed off her colon and other lower organs. My mother called all of us to drive over, and they had her under and she was near death.
It was traumatic, and they not only ignored the problem they created, they kept ignoring the complications they’d created. A common problem that medical staff can create, just went ignored.
Do not trust medical staff to do the right thing. Your life, or a loved one’s life, is in the balance. Get second opinions. Check in constantly, if it’s a friend or relative. Don’t accept extra pain killer for an apparently completely different problem they didn’t have before showing up. Why do they need that pain killer, when that’s not the reason for being in the hospital?
A study I put up earlier said 25% of all patients have something detrimental happen to them from someone on staff at that hospital.
Assume it’s 100%, if that helps you be more alert and attentive to the patient’s care. Doctors and nursing staff are human and as competent as you are on complicated things, when tired. So, how many of you do calculus problems when you are tired?
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
I have a feeling the number may actually be higher.
Half of all doctors and nurses are “below average.”
Don’t forget that these days you are likely not to see a physician for basic care but rather a nurse practitioner or a physician’s assistant who may lack the knowledge and skills to spot serious diseases early. You also have insurance providers acting as gatekeepers preventing access to certain drugs, procedures, and medical specialists unless the patient jumps through numerous hoops.
“Don’t accept extra pain killer for an apparently completely different problem they didn’t have before showing up.”
This goes for any change in medication while you or a love one is in the hospital. Often that is what causes new symptoms that then get aggressively treated causing the doctors to order even more meds. Often destroying the body’s own ability to fight off infection and heal itself.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.