Adverse effects




Diagnosis problems are the dominant cause of medical malpractice payments, accounting for 35% of total payments in a study of 25 years of data and 350,000 claims.

Overdiagnosisedit

Overdiagnosis is the diagnosis of "disease" that will never cause symptoms or death during a patient's lifetime. It is a problem because it turns people into patients unnecessarily and because it can lead to economic waste (overutilization) and treatments that may cause harm. Overdiagnosis occurs when a disease is diagnosed correctly, but the diagnosis is irrelevant. A correct diagnosis may be irrelevant because treatment for the disease is not available, not needed, or not wanted.

Errorsedit

Most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, according to a 2015 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Causes and factors of error in diagnosis are:

  • the manifestation of disease are not sufficiently noticeable
  • a disease is omitted from consideration
  • too much significance is given to some aspect of the diagnosis
  • the condition is a rare disease with symptoms suggestive of many other conditions
  • the condition has a rare presentation

Lag timeedit

When making a medical diagnosis, a lag time is a delay in time until a step towards diagnosis of a disease or condition is made. Types of lag times are mainly:

  • Onset-to-medical encounter lag time, the time from onset of symptoms until visiting a health care provider
  • Encounter-to-diagnosis lag time, the time from first medical encounter to diagnosis
    • Lag time due to delays in reading x-rays have been cited as a major challenge in care delivery. The Department of Health and Human Services has reportedly found that interpretation of x-rays is rarely available to emergency room physicians prior to patient discharge.

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