The Wall Street Journal recently published the results of a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins who found that diagnostic errors accounted for a major and costly portion of the overall medical errors that take place in the U.S. each year.
The study, published in the journal BMJ Quality and Safety, involved researchers examining 350,000 medical malpractice claims that have been filed over the past 25 years. The results were clear that the most common, most expensive and, ultimately, the most dangerous errors were in misdiagnosing patients. The study estimated that such misdiagnosis leads to permanent injury or death in as many as 160,000 people each year.
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