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7.4 Million Patients Are Misdiagnosed in the Emergency Room Each Year
A recent systematic review published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a subset of the HHS, revealed that roughly 7.4 million of the 130 million emergency room visits are misdiagnosed annually.
Emergency departments (EDs) across the United States are critical pillars of the healthcare industry, providing treatment options for various conditions, from viral infections to cardiac failure. As the impending physician shortage continues, nearly all EDs across the US are overrun and understaffed, resulting in more errors along the way. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), a subset of the HHS, analyzed diagnostic errors in EDs across the US, finding that nearly 7.4 million patients are misdiagnosed yearly.
The AHRQ used data from PubMed, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and Embase from 2000 to 2001. After sifting through the studies, the AHRQ picked out diagnostic errors and misdiagnosis-related harms from ED visits. In the review, the HHS states, “We applied standard definitions for diagnostic errors, misdiagnosis-related harms (adverse events), and serious harms (permanent disability or death).”
Throughout the research process, the AHRQ looked at 19,127 studies and included 279. Data from the studies determined that 7.4 million patients, 5.7%, of the 130 million ED patients annually are misdiagnosed. Among those misdiagnosed, 2.6 million suffer from an adverse event. Roughly 370,000 were seriously harmed, with one in 350 patients suffering permanent disability or death.
Additionally, researchers determined that 15 clinical conditions accounted for 68% of severe misdiagnosis harms. Chief of these conditions is stroke, followed by myocardial infarction, aortic aneurysm and dissection, spinal cord compression and injury, venous thromboembolism, meningitis and encephalitis, sepsis, lung cancer, traumatic brain injury and intracranial hemorrhage, arterial thromboembolism, spinal and intracranial abscess, cardiac arrhythmia, pneumonia, GI perforation and rupture, and intestinal obstruction. The error rates across these diseases varied from 1.5% to 56%.
“Policy changes to consider based on this review include (1) standardizing measurement and research results reporting to maximize comparability of measures of diagnostic error and misdiagnosis-related harms; (2) creating a National Diagnostic Performance Dashboard to track performance; and (3) using multiple policy levers (e.g., research funding, public accountability, payment reforms) to facilitate the rapid development and deployment of solutions to address this critically important patient safety concern,” stated the AHRQ report.
