Misdiagnosis: A Case Study

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Measuring misdiagnosis has been named one of the top leading quality issues in health care for 2015 according to Houston Veterans Affairs and Baylor College of Medicine. Hardeep Singh, MD, researcher for Baylor estimates that nearly 12 million patients – one in every 20 adults are given the wrong diagnosis or delayed diagnosis every year. Astonishingly, 5.08% of outpatient diagnoses are incorrect resulting in 50% of those patients who could have avoided extended hospital stays and even death had the correct diagnosis been made the first time. However, the rarer the disease the more chance of being misdiagnosed (Rettner, 2014).
Cancer misdiagnoses occur 28 percent of the time and can occur close to 44 percent of the time for more rare