Diagnostic Errors Common, Costly, and Harmful
"We have said repeatedly that the fundamental premise is if you don't have the diagnosis right you can't possibly get the treatment right unless occasionally you get lucky," says David E. Newman-Toker, MD, an associate professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and leader of the study being published online in BMJ Quality and Safety.
"The correct premise is that correct therapy begins with correct diagnosis. Unfortunately the entire medical profession operates under the collective delusion that diagnoses are almost always right," Newman-Tucker says. "There are all kinds of things we track in the hospitals; quality measures of one kind or another. But nobody is tracking whether or not their diagnoses are right. It's either ironic or scary but it's not good."
