A Medical Detective Story- The Wall Street Journal

Physician and researcher Hardeep Singh probes one of the most vexing issues in medicine: diagnostic errors. As chief of health policy, quality and informatics at Houston’s Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center and an associate professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Singh measures the human toll of such mistakes and investigates how technology can help clinicians avoid making them. He recently served as an expert reviewer on a new report from the Institute of Medicine which warns that most Americans will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime.

He answered questions from The Wall Street Journal about what doctors and patients can do to make sure they get to the bottom of the diagnostic puzzle.

WSJ: The Institute of Medicine report drew on your research which has shown that an estimated 5% of patients or 12 million American adults are misdiagnosed every year. How did you arrive at that figure?

DR. SINGH: We built estimates of misdiagnosis by analyzing three previous studies on missed, delayed or wrong diagnosis in outpatient care. While studying high-risk situations such as when patients returned to the doctor’s office unexpectedly or when certain tests did not receive timely follow up, we looked for any evidence of a missed opportunity to make a correct or timely diagnosis in hindsight. Read more…