Identifying diagnostic errors in primary care using an electronic screening algorithm.
Singh H, Thomas EJ, Khan MM, et al. Identifying diagnostic errors in primary care using an electronic screening algorithm. Arch Intern Med. 2007;167(3):302-308.
This study used a novel screening method to characterize the epidemiology of diagnostic errors in primary care. An electronic medical record was screened for hospitalizations or urgent visits occurring within 10 days following a primary care visit for the same symptoms. In more than 10% of these cases, the initial evaluating physician missed the diagnosis or arrived at an incorrect diagnosis, most commonly due to failure to take an adequate history. A prior study used comparable methods to identify a strikingly similar incidence of missed diagnosis of acute myocardial ischemia in the primary care setting.