New Report Reveals 795,000 Americans a Year Die or are Permanently Disabled after Misdiagnosis

It may come as a shock to many Americans that hundreds of thousands of patients a year die or are permanently disabled after misdiagnosis by doctors. Medical misdiagnosis occurs when a patient goes to the doctor or Emergency Room with symptoms and the doctor misdiagnoses them with the wrong medical condition. As a result, the patient loses out on potentially life-saving medical care or receives inappropriate care for their actual medical issue. Some of the most common medical misdiagnoses are for various types of cancer including colorectal, lung, and prostate, and other conditions such as brain hemorrhage, stroke, and heart failure.

If you or a loved one was seriously harmed because of misdiagnosis, you may be entitled to a settlement that compensates you for your losses and injuries. Speak to an experienced medical malpractice lawyer to discuss your legal rights and determine if you have a case.

New Report Reveals 795,000 Americans a Year Die or are Permanently Disabled after Misdiagnosis

A new report released by the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute Center for Diagnostic Excellence finally puts a more concrete number on the number of Americans harmed by medical misdiagnosis each year. Until this report, numbers varied widely, casting doubt on the number of people harmed by this issue.

Out of the 795,000 Americans who are misdiagnosed annually, 371,000 patients die and 424,000 are permanently disabled after misdiagnosis. These misdiagnoses are happening across a variety of medical care settings such as hospitals and doctor’s offices. Lending credence to the numbers, the report states that this estimate “matches data produced from multiple prior studies that focused on diagnostic errors in ambulatory clinics and emergency departments and during inpatient care.”

With numbers this big, misdiagnosis is clearly a public health emergency that we have failed to address.

Why are health conditions misdiagnosed?

In most cases, health conditions are misdiagnosed because the patient’s symptoms mirror symptoms for a different condition. This is a particular problem when symptoms are subtle or do not present in a way that is common for a particular condition. For example, everyone knows that if someone is clutching their chest they may be having a heart attack, but a heart attack can also present as nausea and cold sweats.

Here are some other reasons for medical misdiagnosis:

• Patient doesn’t accurately describe their symptoms or leaves out certain symptoms
• The doctor fails to consider the patient’s medical and family history
• The doctor doesn’t carefully listen or dismisses symptoms because they don’t believe the patient falls into a certain risk category or attributes the symptoms to something else such as obesity or mental health
• The doctor orders the wrong diagnostic test(s)
• Test results are read incorrectly
• Failure to refer to a specialist for diagnosis due to disorganized medical records or other reasons

How often are medical conditions misdiagnosed?

Overall, medical conditions are misdiagnosed about 11% of the time, the report says, with some diseases getting missed much more often than others. Researchers found that:

• 1.5% of heart attacks are misdiagnosed
• 17.5% of strokes are misdiagnosed
• 62% of spinal abscesses are misdiagnosed

In addition, the report found that these five conditions cause 38.7% of total serious harms: stroke, sepsis, pneumonia, venous thromboembolism, and lung cancer. Because a small number of diseases make up a large share of the problem, “A disease-focused approach to diagnostic error prevention and mitigation has the potential to significantly reduce these harms.” The report found that even reducing diagnostic errors by 50% for these five conditions could cut permanent disabilities and deaths by 150,000 per year.

The Seattle Personal Injury Lawyers You Want on Your Side

The personal injury attorneys at Tinker Law Firm have been winning birth injury, medical malpractice, and personal injury cases for individuals and their loved ones in Seattle and across Washington State since 1974. We seek justice for injury victims who have been harmed by preventable medical errors, and the negligent or abusive actions of another. Our clients pay no fees or expenses to file a personal injury claim; our firm advances out-of-pocket expenses and is only reimbursed when we recover a settlement on your behalf. Do not delay; personal injury claims in Washington State have a statute of limitations, which means they must be filed within a certain time from the date of the injury.

Call us now at 206-842-1000 or contact us online to schedule a free consultation with one of our skilled and experienced injury attorneys.