Patient Safety Primers

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and Diagnostic Error

Diagnostic error has been increasingly recognized as an important and evolving patient safety issue. Amid a global pandemic of infection due to a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), delayed diagnosis of COVID-19 may lead to preventable transmission to other individuals, including exposed family members and health care workers, and delayed initiation of effective treatment. Perhaps even more importantly, other treatable diagnoses may be missed as clinicians focus on suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19. This Primer is an early review; it applies well-established principles of diagnostic error and improvement of diagnostic accuracy to the topic of COVID-19. It will be updated over time to incorporate new information and evidence in this rapidly evolving field, including resources from Federal agencies and the peer-reviewed literature.