Types and origins of diagnostic errors in primary care settings

Diagnostic errors are an understudied aspect of ambulatory patient safety.

To determine the types of diseases missed and the diagnostic processes involved in cases of confirmed diagnostic errors in primary care settings and to determine whether record reviews could shed light on potential contributory factors to inform future interventions.

We reviewed medical records of diagnostic errors detected at 2 sites through electronic health record-based triggers. Triggers were based on patterns of patients' unexpected return visits after an initial primary care index visit.

A large urban Veterans Affairs facility and a large integrated private health care system.

Our study focused on 190 unique instances of diagnostic errors detected in primary care visits between October 1, 2006, and September 30, 2007.

Through medical record reviews, we collected data on presenting symptoms at the index visit, types of diagnoses missed, process breakdowns, potential contributory factors, and potential for harm from errors.

In 190 cases, a total of 68 unique diagnoses were missed. Most missed diagnoses were common conditions in primary care, with pneumonia (6.7%), decompensated congestive heart failure (5.7%), acute renal failure (5.3%), cancer (primary) (5.3%), and urinary tract infection or pyelonephritis (4.8%) being most common. Process breakdowns most frequently involved the patient-practitioner clinical encounter (78.9%) but were also related to referrals (19.5%), patient-related factors (16.3%), follow-up and tracking of diagnostic information (14.7%), and performance and interpretation of diagnostic tests (13.7%). A total of 43.7% of cases involved more than one of these processes. Patient-practitioner encounter breakdowns were primarily related to problems with history-taking (56.3%), examination (47.4%), and/or ordering diagnostic tests for further workup (57.4%). Most errors were associated with potential for moderate to severe harm.

Diagnostic errors identified in our study involved a large variety of common diseases and had significant potential for harm. Most errors were related to process breakdowns in the patient-practitioner clinical encounter. Preventive interventions should target common contributory factors across diagnoses, especially those that involve data gathering and synthesis in the patient-practitioner encounter.