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Ambulatory care settings are receiving increased attention as a focus for patient safety improvements. Using data from a multistate patient safety organization (PSO) database, the researchers sought to characterize patterns and characteristics of patient safety incidents reported in ambulatory care settings. Analyses found that 5.9% of events resulted in severe harm and 1.9% resulted in patient death. Over half of the events were from outpatient subspecialty care; fewer events occurred in home/community (5.2%), primary care (2.1%), or dialysis (2.0%) settings. Medication-related events were most common, followed by clinical deterioration and falls. Predictors of higher harm included diagnostic errors, patient/caregiver challenges, and events occurring in home/community or psychiatric settings. These results can help ambulatory care settings target safety events and develop systems-level prevention strategies.  

Diagnostic errors are a known cause of preventable adverse events. The vast majority of children ultimately determined to have fetal alcohol spectrum disorder in this cohort study had been previously misdiagnosed, despite having undergone clinical evaluation for developmental or behavioral problems.

The authors used focus groups and interviews to develop a taxonomy of errors in inpatient psychiatry and explore underlying systems causes of the errors. Medication errors, diagnostic errors, and failure to prevent patient harm (such as suicide attempts) were among the common types of errors identified.

This study examined diagnostic errors during the initial course of bipolar disease and discovered low rates of diagnostic accuracy at initial presentation and low rates of those maintaining the diagnosis.