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Maternal safety is threatened by systemic biases, care complexities, and diagnostic issues. This issue brief explores the role of diagnostic error in maternal morbidity and mortality, the preventability of common problems such as maternal hemorrhage, and the importance of multidisciplinary efforts to realize improvement. The brief focuses on events occurring during childbirth and up to a week postpartum.

Lack of appropriate follow up of diagnostic imaging can result in care delays, patient harm, and death. This report summarizes an investigation of 25 imaging failures in the British National Health Service (NHS). The analysis identified communication and coordination issues resulting in lack of action and reporting of unanticipated findings to properly advance care. Recommendations to improve imaging in the NHS include use of previous analyses to enhance learning from failure.

The use of telemedicine has expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic into the mental health and diagnostic realms. This session explored how the practice of telediagnosis has emerged and share concerns about its safety and quality. Dr. Mark Graber is a featured speaker.

Measuring and improving safety culture are essential patient safety activities. This webinar introduced the Diagnostic Safety Supplemental Item Sets for the AHRQ Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) Medical Office Survey focusing on diagnostic safety and presenters shared results from a pilot test.

The processes supporting safe and accurate diagnosis involve many steps that are prone to human error. This collaborative will engage teams to explore test result management and follow-up coordination to improve timeliness, collaboration, and communication to support safe care. The launch of the collaborative has been delayed due to COVID-19.

Effective diagnosis is enhanced through multidisciplinary team-based efforts. This newsletter article outlines opportunities inherent in expanding the role of nursing in the diagnostic process. It highlights barriers to collaboration and suggests interprofessional training as one avenue toward improvement.

Examination of diagnostic failure and identification of reduction strategies require multidisciplinary expertise to be successful. This collaborative initiative will initially develop educational materials to inform health care organization adoption of diagnostic improvement best practices. Building on that experience, a survey component to complement the Leapfrog annual survey will be developed to enhance measurement and motivate improvement.

With input from a stakeholder committee, the National Quality Forum identified recommendations for the practical application of the Diagnostic Process and Outcomes domain of the 2017 Measurement Framework  for measuring and improving diagnostic error and patient safety. The committee developed four ‘use cases’ (missed subtle clinical findings; communication failures; information overload; and dismissed patients) reflecting high priority examples of diagnostic error that can result in patient harm. The report includes comprehensive, broad-scope, actionable, and specific recommendations for implementing quality improvement activities to engage patients, educate clinicians, leverage technology, and support a culture of safety with the goal of reducing diagnostic errors. 

Organizations worldwide are focusing efforts on reducing the conditions that contribute to medical error. This website provides a collection of reports and other resources that cover activities and concerns of the 37 member countries active in the organization to address universal challenges to patient safety.