The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is launching a program to help hospitals reduce diagnostic errors and provide more safe, accurate patient care, the agency announced Tuesday.
Missed, delayed or wrong diagnoses can occur due to a variety of factors, including communication breakdowns and technological issues, said Dr. Preeta Kutty, deputy associate director for science in the division of healthcare quality promotion at the CDC. Every year, diagnostic errors contribute to around 371,000 deaths and 424,000 permanent disabilities, according to a 2023 study published in The BMJ, a peer-reviewed medical journal.
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The Agency for Healthcare Research Quality and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services worked with the CDC on recommendations for clinicians and healthcare leaders to cut down on those diagnostic errors as part of the new core elements for diagnostic excellence.
The program will add to the CDC’s core elements for antibiotic stewardship and sepsis management.
“We hope that by providing examples of how to monitor and learn from diagnostic safety events, it will help the hospital improve teamwork and coordination when the patient is hospitalized and discharged,” Kutty said.
The agencies advise hospitals to: set aside resources for a diagnostic excellence team and committee; track and report any incorrect diagnoses; involve patients in care decisions; and put protocols in place to ensure the right diagnostic tests are ordered, interpreted, communicated and acted upon.
Each recommendation was developed using feedback from clinicians, patients and subject matter experts including CMS, AHRQ, The Joint Commission and the American Hospital Association.
As part of the program, health system leaders can see examples of successful patient diagnostics, how and when to communicate diagnoses, and how care teams can be effectively structured to look into diagnostic errors.
The CDC is also releasing a medical test checklist for patients, families and caregivers to involve them in ensuring diagnostic accuracy.
This checklist includes questions for patients to ask their clinician about their condition, as well as actions to take to make sure their medical history is up to date and they have access to care plans shared with clinical teams.
“We want the patients to understand what their medical condition is, be educated on it and have the opportunity to go back and ask their physicians, ‘What happened to my test? What are my results?’ So it just doesn't stop within the hospital,” Kutty said.
