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 Cancer test communication failures can contribute to physical, emotional, and financial patient harm. This report examines missed opportunities made by multiple clinicians involved in the care of a patient with prostate cancer who then died from metastasized disease Seven recommendations are included for improving abnormal test result communication and error management at the facility.

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.

Women have been affected by implicit bias that undermines the safety of their care and trust in the medical system. This book shares the history anchoring the mindsets driving ineffective care for women and a discussion of the author’s long-term lupus misdiagnosis.

Missed or delayed diagnosis in maternal care can result in serious harm to both the mother and the child. This report analyzes a delayed diagnosis ectopic pregnancy incident and found that referral and discharge missteps contributed to the error.

Surgical specimen and laboratory process problems can affect diagnosis. This publication examines factors that contribute to errors across the surgical pathology process and reviews strategies to reduce their impact on care. Chapters discuss areas of focus to encourage process improvement and error response, such as information technology, specimen tracking, root cause analysis, and disclosure.

Patient stories offer important insights regarding the impact medical errors have on patients and their families. This book shares the author's experience with medical error and spotlights how lack of transparency in European health care can contribute to avoidable process failures that result in patient harm.

A previous report by the Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of the Inspector General found that many veterans at the Phoenix VA facility endured months-long waits for primary care appointments, due in part to inappropriate manipulation of the scheduling process so that the facility could appear to meet VA quality metrics. This follow-up report examined whether these delays led to patients experiencing preventable harm and further investigated the root causes of excessive wait times and the generalizability of the problem across the VA system. The investigators concluded that no deaths or serious harm could be directly attributed to the scheduling delays; however, the report uncovered many examples of poor quality care, including delayed diagnoses of cancer, preventable readmissions, and poor care coordination. It also appears that scheduling manipulation was rife throughout the system. The report strongly attributes the "corrosive culture" of the VA and its unresponsive leadership as major factors in the system's failure to address longstanding problems with access to care. Though the VA has achieved impressive accomplishments in providing high-quality care, the scheduling scandal has caused serious damage to its reputation. A recent commentary by Dr. Kenneth Kizer (who, as Undersecretary for Health in the VA, was widely credited for reforming the VA in the 1990s) and Dr. Ashish Jha recommends several reforms the VA should implement to transform its culture and restore its standards.

This book provides an introduction to key patient safety topics and includes a set of 20 case studies to demonstrate opportunities for error prevention.

This report analyzes the findings of a diagnostic error investigation and provides numerous recommendations to improve standards for treating symptomatic breast disease.

This report illustrates weaknesses in current pathology practice of breast cancer diagnosis and suggests improvements for reliability and effectiveness.