Diagnostic error continues to be a source of preventable patient harm. The authors undertook a retrospective review of primary care consultations to identify incidence, origin and avoidable harm of missed diagnostic opportunities (MDO). Nearly three-quarters of MDO involved multiple process breakdowns (e.g., history taking, misinterpretation of diagnostic tests, or lack of follow up). Just over one third resulted in moderate to severe avoidable patient harm. Because the majority of MDO involve several contributing factors, interventions, including policy changes, should be multipronged.

Accurate and timely feedback about patient outcomes can inform and improve future clinical decision-making; however, many barriers exist that prevent effective feedback. This article suggests a sociotechnical approach using information technology (IT) to provide clinician feedback. Feedback sent using the electronic health record can be provided asynchronously, by any member of the care team, and in a structured format to ensure relevance and usefulness.

In addition to being used for patient-specific clinical purposes, data within the electronic health record (EHR) may be used for other purposes including epidemiological research. Researchers in the UK developed and tested a clinical decision support system (CDSS) to evaluate changes in the types and number of observations that primary care physicians entered into the EHR during simulated patient encounters. Physicians documented more clinical observations using the CDSS compared to the standard electronic health record. The increase in documented clinical observations has the potential to improve validity of research developed from EHR data.

Delays in cancer diagnosis can lead to treatment delays and patient harm. This study linking primary care and cancer registry data found that more than one-quarter of bladder and kidney cancer patients presenting with fast-tract referral features did not achieve a timely diagnosis. These findings suggest inadequate adherence to guidelines intended to help identify patients with high risk of cancer based on the presence of alarm signs and symptoms.

Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) and computerized physician order entry (CPOE) have the potential to improve patient safety. This randomized trial evaluated the impact of integrating CDSS into CPOE among general practitioners in Belgium. The intervention improved appropriateness and decreased volume of laboratory test ordering and did not show any increases in diagnostic errors.

Incomplete or delayed test result communication can contribute to diagnostic errors, delayed treatments and patient harm. The authors synthesized systematic and narrative reviews from multiple perspectives discussing diagnostic test result communication failures. The review identified several avenues for improving closed-loop communication through the use of technology, audit and feedback, and use of point-of-care or bedside testing.

Efforts to reduce diagnostic error should include educational strategies for improving diagnosis. This article describes the development of a learning health system around diagnostic safety at one large, integrated health care system. The program identified missed opportunities in diagnosis based on clinician reports, patient complaints, and risk management, and used trained facilitators to provide feedback to clinicians about these missed opportunities as learning opportunities. Both facilitators and recipients found the program to be useful and believed it would improve future diagnostic safety. 

Extended work shifts for nurses and physicians have been linked to increased risk of errors. In this systematic review, the authors discuss the impact of shift work disorder on errors and safety implications for radiographers. Studies suggested a positive correlation between errors and increased mental and physical fatigue resulting from shift work or rapid shift rotation, however none of the identified studies focused specifically on radiology professionals.

The authors discuss the challenges social inequalities pose to machine learning models, provide several recommendations for adopting ethical principles for the delivery of machine learning-assisted health care.

This paper discusses potential vulnerabilities in the laboratory diagnosis of COVID-19, such as sample misidentification, inappropriate or inadequate sample collection, sample contamination, as well as the challenges to the diagnostic accuracy of current COVID-19 tests.

A brief survey of two internal medicine practices explored clinician perceptions of individual- and systems-level factors contributing to diagnostic errors. The most commonly reported individual-level factors contributing to diagnostic error was atypical patient presentations (83%), failure to consider other diagnoses (63%) and inadequate follow-up of test results (53%). Common systems-level contributors identified were cognitive burden associated with the electronic health record system (68%), inadequate time (64%) and lack of collaboration (40%).

There are challenges to identifying and measuring diagnostic errors in healthcare settings. This systematic review found evidence that team meetings, error documentation, and trigger algorithms in various clinical settings may reduce diagnostic errors. The authors also found that while there have been numerous studies on interventions targeting diagnostic errors, few such interventions are being used in clinical settings.

The systems approach to analyzing adverse events emphasizes how active errors (those made by individuals) and latent errors (underlying system flaws) contribute to preventable harm. Adverse events in ambulatory care may arise from an especially complex array of latent errors. This paper explores the role of time management problems, which the authors term "tempos," as a contributor to errors in ambulatory care. Through a review of closed malpractice claims, the authors identify 5 tempos that can affect the risk of an adverse event: disease tempo (the expected disease course), patient tempo (timing of complaints and adherence to recommendations), office tempo (including the availability of clinicians and test results), system tempo (such as access to specialists or emergency services), and access to knowledge. The role of these tempos in precipitating diagnostic errors and communication errors is discussed through analysis of the patterns of errors in malpractice claims. A preventable adverse event caused by misunderstanding of disease tempo is discussed in this AHRQ WebM&M commentary.

Lean methodology is a quality improvement method to increase safety and efficiency in healthcare. In this small study, five clinicians in a gynecology practice used Lean methods to redesign the workflow to improve the diagnostic accuracy of Pap tests. Although two clinicians dropped out of the study, the remaining three improved Pap test quality and diagnostic accuracy, maintained up to six months.