Diagnostic errors currently impact about 12 million Americans, and medical malpractice claims cost over $100 billion annually. AHRQ’s plan comes partly in response to the National Academy of Medicine’s 2015 report Improving Diagnosis in Healthcare, which identified several causes of diagnostic errors, including miscommunication and a lack of transparency in healthcare workplaces.
With the aid of $2 million in Congressional funding, AHRQ will focus its research on what it calls the “Big Three” disease categories linked to half of all diagnostic errors: vascular events, cancer and infection. Research findings can help develop tools that reduce diagnostic errors.
Recent AHRQ research-based strategies include Patient Safety Learning Laboratories, a Health Services Research project, a guide to improving laboratory testing and the AHRQ QuestionBuilder App, which allows patients to prepare questions before appointments to improve diagnosis timing and accuracy.
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