Article Examines Healthcare Systems’ Efforts to Reduce Diagnostic Errors

Healthcare risk managers may be interested in a November 17, 2013, Wall Street Journal article that discusses the harm caused by diagnostic errors and what some healthcare systems are doing to prevent them from occurring. According to the article, many large healthcare systems are now mining their electronic health record (EHR) systems for red flags like missed tests and abnormal test results that were never followed up on. At one system cited in the article, a case manager reviewed 8,076 patients with abnormal prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test results for prostate cancer. Of the more than 2,200 patients that had follow-up biopsies from 2006 to 2009, 745 cancers were diagnosed and the system did not experience any malpractice claims related to missed PSA tests during the period.