A Road Map for Reducing Diagnostic Errors in Healthcare

A recent article* about how to reduce diagnostic errors in healthcare caught our attention, for a couple of reasons.  First, it describes a fairly comprehensive checklist of specific practices to address diagnostic errors, and second, the practices include organizational culture and reflect systems thinking, both subjects dear to us.  The checklist’s purpose is to help an organization rate its current performance and identify areas for improvement.

The authors used a reasonable method to develop the checklist: they convened an anonymous Delphi group, identified and ranked initial lists of practices, shared the information among the group, then collected and organized the updated rankings.  The authors then sent the draft checklist to several hospital managers, i.e., the kind of people who would have to implement the approach, for their input on feasibility and clarity.  The final checklist was then published.

The checklist focuses on diagnostic errors, i.e., missed, delayed, or wrong diagnoses.  It does not address other major types of healthcare errors, e.g., botched procedures, drug mix-ups, or provider hygiene practices.

The authors propose 10 practices, summarized below, to assess current performance and direct interventions with respect to diagnostic errors:

1.    Senior leadership builds a “board-to-bedside” accountability framework to measure and improve diagnostic safety.

2.    Promote a just culture and create a psychologically safe environment that encourages clinicians and staff to share opportunities to improve diagnostic safety without fear of retribution.

3.    Create feedback loops to increase information flow about patients’ diagnostic and treatment-related outcomes after handoffs from one provider/department to another.

4.    Develop multidisciplinary perspectives to understand and address contributory factors in the analysis of diagnostic safety events.

5.    Seek patient and family feedback to identify and understand diagnostic safety concerns.

6.    Encourage patients to review their health records and ask questions about their diagnoses and related treatments.

7.    Prioritize equity in diagnostic safety efforts.

8-10.    Establish standardized systems and processes to (1) encourage direct, collaborative interactions between treating clinical teams and diagnostic specialties; (2) ensure reliable communication of diagnostic information between care providers and with patients and families; and (3) close the loop on communication and follow up on abnormal test results and referrals.

Our Perspective

We support the authors recognition that diagnostic errors are difficult to analyze; they can involve clinical uncertainty, the natural evolution of diagnosis as more information becomes available, and cognitive errors, all exacerbated by system vulnerabilities.  Addressing such errors requires a systems approach.  

The emphasis on a just culture and establishing feedback loops is good.  We would add the importance of management commitment to fixing and learning from identified problems, and a management compensation plan that includes monetary incentives for doing this.

However, we believe the probability of a healthcare organization establishing dedicated infrastructure to address diagnostic errors is very low.  First, the authors recognize there is no existing business case to address such errors.  In addition, we suspect there is some uncertainty around how often such errors occur.  The authors say these errors affect at least 5% of US adult outpatients annually but that number is based on a single mini-meta study.**

As a consequence, senior management is not currently motivated by either fear (e.g., higher costs, excessive losses to lawsuits, regulatory sanctions or fines, or reputational loss) or greed (e.g., professional recognition or monetary incentives) to take action.  So our recommended first step should be to determine which types of medical errors present the greatest threats to an institution, how many occur, and then determine what can be done to prevent them or minimize their consequences.  (See our July 31, 2020 post on Dr. Danielle Ofri’s book When We Do Harm for more on medical errors.)

Second, the organization has other competing goals demanding attention and resources so management’s inclination will be to minimize costs by simply extending any existing error identification and resolution program to include diagnostic errors.

Third, diagnosis is not a cut-and-dried process, like inserting a catheter, double-checking patients’ names, or hand washing.  The diagnostic process is essentially probabilistic, with different diagnoses possible from the same data, and to some degree, subjective.  Management probably does not want a stand-alone system that second guesses and retrospectively judges doctors’ decisions and opinions.  Such an approach could be perceived as intruding on doctors’ freedom to exercise professional judgment and is bad for morale.

Bottom line: The checklist is well-intentioned but a bit naïve.  It is a good guide for identifying weak spots and hazards in a healthcare organization, and the overall approach is not necessarily limited to diagnostic errors.   


*  Singh, H., Mushtaq, U., Marinez, A., Shahid, U., Huebner, J., McGaffigan, P., and Upadhyay, D.K., “Developing the Safer Dx Checklist of Ten Safety Recommendations for Health Care Organizations to Address Diagnostic Errors,” The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, No. 48, Aug. 10, 2022, pp. 581–590.  The Joint Commission is an entity that inspects and accredits healthcare providers, mainly hospitals.

**  Singh, H., Meyer, A.N.D., and Thomas, E.J., “The frequency of diagnostic errors in outpatient care: estimations from three large observational studies involving US adult populations,” BMJ Quality and Safety, Vol. 23, No. 9, April 2014, pp. 727–731.

Culture in the Healthcare Industry

A couple of articles recognizing the importance of cultural factors in the healthcare space recently caught our attention.  The authors break no new ground but we’re reporting these articles because they appeared in a couple of the U.S.’s most prestigious medical journals.

We begin with an opinion piece in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).*  The authors’ focus is on clinician burnout (which we discussed on Nov. 6, 2019) but they cite earlier work on the importance of quality and culture in the healthcare workplace, including “the culture changes needed for effective teamwork and optimizing the authentic voice of every team member. . . . [and examining] the consequences of medical hierarchy and inequity.”  

One of the references in the JAMA piece is an earlier article by two of the authors in The New England Journal of Medicine.**  This article discusses how the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and its predecessor entities have influenced the trajectory of the discussion of healthcare effectiveness, starting by documenting the wide scope of inappropriate care prescribed to patients, i.e., the overuse of ineffective medical practices.  Their seminal 1999 report, “To Err Is Human,” estimated that 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die in hospitals each year because of medical errors.  

Their 2001 report, “Crossing the Quality Chasm,” defined a framework for healthcare quality with six dimensions: safety, effectiveness, patient-centeredness, timeliness, efficiency, and equity.  In practice, the quality of healthcare services has improved since then in several specific areas, e.g., reduced rates of acquired infections, but “wholesale, systemic improvement in quality of care has proven difficult to bring to scale.”  We wrote about the lack of progress on Nov. 9, 1920.  One significant ongoing problem is that efforts to increase provider accountability, e.g., ascertaining if providers are delivering appropriate care, has resulted in a negative impact on clinicians’ morale.  “The United States has yet to find for health care the wisest balance between accountability, which is critical, and supports for a trusting culture of growth and learning, which, as the NAM asserts, is the essential foundation for continual improvement.”

Our Perspective

None of this information is new.  What is worth noting is how cultural aspects have become important topics for discussion at the highest levels of healthcare policy. 

If you have been following our healthcare posts on Safetymatters, you know we have discussed the challenges and the progress, or lack thereof, in reducing errors and increasing effectiveness.  We have emphasized the role of a strong safety culture in the delivery of high quality services.  Click on the healthcare label to see all of our related posts.

Healthcare has a long way to go to catch up with other industries that have integrated high levels of safety and quality into their daily operations.  To illustrate healthcare’s current position, we will repurpose a recent McKinsey article on corporate ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) attributes.***  McKinsey uses a 3-category framework (Minimum, Common, and Next level practices) to describe a business’s ESG character.  For our purposes, we will replace ESG with safety and quality (S&C), and excerpt and adapt specific attributes that could and should exist in a healthcare organization.

Minimum practices – focus on risk mitigation and do no harm measures

•    React to external social-legal-political trends
•    Address obvious vulnerabilities
•    Meet baseline standards
•    Pledge to minimal commitment levels

Common practices – substantive efforts, more proactive than reactive

•    Track major trends and develop strategies to address them
•    Identify strengths and use them to move toward S&C goals
•    Comply with voluntary standards and perform above average
•    Engage with stakeholder groups to understand what matters to them

Next level practices – full integration of S&C into strategy and operations

•    View S&C as essential components of overall strategy
•    Link clearly articulated leadership areas with S&C goals
•    Embed S&C in capital and resource allocation
•    Tie S&C to employee incentives and evaluations
•    Ensure that S&C reports cover the entity’s full set of operations

Our judgment is that most healthcare entities, especially hospitals, demonstrate minimum practices and are trying to get ahead of the curve by implementing some common practices.  Some entities may claim to be using next level practices, but these are generally narrow or limited efforts.  The industry’s biggest challenge is getting the entrenched guilds of doctors and nurses, accustomed to working in protective silos, to fully embrace increased accountability.  At the same time, senior management must create, maintain, and manage a non-punitive work environment and a just culture.


*  Rotenstein, L.S., Berwick, D.M., and Cassel, C.K., “Addressing Well-being Throughout the Health Care Workforce: The Next Imperative,” JAMA, Vol. 328, No. 6 (Aug. 9, 2022), pp. 521-22.  Published online July 18, 2022.  JAMA is a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Medical Association.

**  Berwick, D.M., and Cassel, C.K., “The NAM and the Quality of Health Care — Inflecting a Field,” The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 383, No. 6 (Aug. 6, 2020), pp. 505-08.

***  Pérez, L., Hunt, V., Samandari, H, Nuttall, R., and Bellone, D., “How to make ESG real,” McKinsey Quarterly (Aug. 2022).