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A health care professional’s failure to follow-up on abnormal diagnostic test results represents one of the most problematic safety issues in the practice of outpatient medicine.
Newsletter
Test Result Notification
Aug 31, 2013
Patient Safety Alert 15: Test Result Notification (PDF)
The AMC PSO recently held a collaborative convening session of its Ambulatory Patient Safety Leaders in order to both discuss current issues and possible solutions and propagate the natural progression of CRICO’s established mission of helping health care providers turn credible data into effective action.
Alert
A health care professional’s failure to follow-up on abnormal diagnostic test results represents one of the most problematic safety issues in the practice of outpatient medicine (Muff and Bates, 2001; Poon et al. 2003) and is an issue that has garnered national attention in the courts, the press, and among professional medical associations.
- As discussed by Poon et al. (2004), previously published peer reviewed papers examining the communication of test results to patients indicate that: 36% of clinicians do not routinely inform their patients about test results.
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AMC PSO
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More AMC PSO Content
Publications such as whitepapers and guidelines derived from the AMC PSO convenings.
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Diagnostic Errors Linked to Nearly 800,000 Deaths or Cases of Permanent Disability in U.S.
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A new report by CRICO and Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute Center for Diagnostic Excellence provides the first national estimate of permanent morbidity and mortality resulting from diagnostic errors across all clinical settings. The Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine (SIDM) works to raise awareness of the burden of diagnostic error as a major public health issue and calls for collaboration and policy action on the issue.
Burden of Serious Harms from Diagnostic Error in the USA
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New analysis of national data by a multidisciplinary research team from the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute Center for Diagnostic Excellence and CRICO, found that across all clinical settings, an estimated 795,000 Americans die or are permanently disabled by diagnostic error each year.