Prevalence and characterisation of diagnostic error among 7-day all-cause hospital medicine readmissions: a retrospective cohort study. | PSNet

Prevalence and characterisation of diagnostic error among 7-day all-cause hospital medicine readmissions: a retrospective cohort study. | PSNet

Prevalence and characterisation of diagnostic error among 7-day all-cause hospital medicine readmissions: a retrospective cohort study

Raffel KE, Kantor MA, Barish P, et al. BMJ Qual Saf. 2020

This retrospective cohort study characterized diagnostic errors among adult patients readmitted to the hospital within 7 days of hospital discharge. Over a 12-month period, 5.6% of admissions were found to contain at least one diagnostic error during the index admissions. These diagnostic errors were primarily related to clinician diagnostic reasoning, including failure to order needed tests, erroneous interpretation of tests, and failure to consider the correct diagnosis. The majority of the diagnostic errors resulted in some form of clinical impact, including short-term morbidity and readmissions.