The Diagnostic Error Index: a quality improvement initiative to identify and measure diagnostic errors.

Diagnostic errors remain an ongoing patient safety challenge and can result in patient harm. This article describes one large pediatric hospital's experience using a systematic methodology to identify and measure diagnostic errors. The quality improvement (QI) project used five domains (autopsy reports, root cause analyses (RCAs), voluntary reporting system, morbidity & mortality conference, and abdominal pain trigger tool) and adjudication by a QI team to identify cases of diagnostic error; Morbidity & mortality conferences, RCAs and abdominal trigger tool identified the majority (91%) of diagnostic errors.