Risk investigations involving genetic identification

Risk managers should consider misidentifications as causes of otherwise unexplained diagnostic and process errors. Genetic tests are powerful tools that can resolve problem cases and indicate ways to improve patient-sample identification. Genetic typing, especially for DNA markers, has provided evidence of patient or sample identity in 21 of 22 hospital and laboratory cases of accidental or intentional patient misidentification, specimen mislabeling, and sample contamination. Identity is established with very high probability if infrequent genetic markers are observed in both unknown and reference specimens. The odds of a match of markers express both the infrequency of finding the match by chance (in specified populations) and the adequacy of testing. Genetic tests establish nonidentity with virtual certainty.