HOUSTON – (May 18, 2020) – As healthcare systems handle the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the risk of misdiagnosing a patient increases.
Health safety experts at Baylor College of Medicine and Press Ganey Associates LLC in Boston identify eight types of diagnostic errors anticipated due to the pandemic and highlight strategies to minimize them.
“Testing for COVID-19 has been a problem, but we have also seen new issues emerge such as reports of patients not seeking help due to fear of the pandemic, with delayed diagnosis of heart attacks, stroke diagnoses and typical emergencies.”
“In this challenging time, it is essential to understand the types of diagnostic errors that can occur and build highly reliable systems to help support our clinicians and prevent harm to patients,” said Dr. Tejal Gandhi, the chief safety and transformation officer at Press Ganey.
By studying rapidly evolving literature and news for emerging diagnosis issues, Singh and Gandhi developed names for the eight types of diagnostic errors in an effort to help clinicians, other healthcare personnel and the public identify them:
Classic: A delayed COVID-19 diagnosis due to lack of accessible tests or tests that read A COVID-19 patient misdiagnosed as non-COVID when they present uncharacteristic symptoms such as nausea and diarrhea, especially if they lack respiratory symptoms.
