When an older adult falls and can’t get up, responses from emergency medical teams are a vital and sometimes life-saving resource. Those so-called “lift-assist” calls are often the first point of contact for a patient in need of care—sometimes that care need is more than simply helping them back in bed or in their chair. The decisions made about how to treat patients on the scene, what questions to ask, and how much intervention is required takes skill and good judgment.
ImproveDx Blog
Enabled by technology, we live in an increasingly self-serve society. Instead of standing in line to see the bank teller, we find the nearest ATM. We use the internet to book our own airline and theater tickets and tap our credit card to pay for the gas we pump. The trend extends to health care as well, including self-serve transactions like paying bills online and using a kiosk to check-in before seeing the doctor, reviewing lab results on a patient portal, participating in patient-led disease communities, and searching online for health information and advice.
Although awareness of diagnostic error has been growing for more than 20 years, and ways to avoid errors and patient harm have emerged from research and experience, hospitals have been slow to address the problem. Many say they simply don’t know where to start. Most have not yet taken action to improve diagnosis, resulting in a notable gap between the promise and rewards of knowledge-based improvement.
The experience of patients whose COVID-19 symptoms persist for 4 weeks or more—Long COVID or post-COVID syndrome—has led to renewed interest in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (MF/CFS), an illness with symptoms similar to Long COVID. Both conditions involve uncertainty regarding diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis and are subject to ongoing research. Organizations around the world, including the National Institutes of Health in the United States, are exploring the possible connections between Long COVID, ME/CFS and other apparently similar conditions.
Recent news stories deliver apparently contradictory messages about artificial intelligence (AI): future prospects leading to lucrative business deals on the one hand and disappointing performance prompting protests and lawsuits on the other.
The Moore Foundation's third grant cycle funds clinical quality measures for diagnostic excellence, targeting the 'big three': vascular events, infections, and cancers.
Six years after the IOM's call, nurses still face barriers to joining the diagnostic team. Why their role matters legally and clinically, and how COVID may help.
As COVID-19 makes remote care routine, SIDM's PCORI-funded TeleDx project captures the early successes, challenges, and open questions of safe, effective telediagnosis.
The past year has been an exercise in humility. For all that was quickly learned about the new SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID-19, there have been constant reminders of what is not yet known, including the infection's long-term implications.
The National Steering Committee (NSC) for Patient Safety has released a National Action Plan intended to provide health systems with renewed momentum and clearer direction for eliminating preventable medical harm. Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety draws from evidence-based practices, widely known and effective interventions, exemplar case examples, and newer innovations.
How the 21st Century Cures Act and OpenNotes expand patient access to health records—what the ONC Final Rule requires, and why full interoperability is still unmet.
Situativity reframes diagnostic error through social cognition—embodied, ecological, situated, and distributed cognition—and how context shapes clinical reasoning.
How COVID-19 caused missed and delayed diagnoses of non-COVID conditions—plunging ER visits, fear and dread risk, and projected excess cancer and cardiac deaths.
A new AHRQ issue brief calls on healthcare organizations to measure diagnostic safety—learning from past events and monitoring high-risk conditions to reduce error.
How COVID-19 accelerated telemedicine for triage, virtual visits, and remote physical exams—plus what it means for diagnostic accuracy and what comes next.
Why feedback is central to diagnostic improvement—calibration, over- and under-confidence, Safety-II, and how Geisinger built a non-punitive program for diagnostic learning.
Advocate Aurora Health, COLA, and University Hospitals join SIDM's Coalition to Improve Diagnosis, committing to ACT for Better Diagnosis and reduce patient harm.
How the physical exam lost ground to technology, the diagnostic errors that follow, and how evidence-based technique, POCUS, and sensor-based haptics can revive it.
With each major anniversary of the Institute of Medicine's To Err Is Human,1 the patient safety community reflects on its progress and future prospects.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), one of the federal agencies supporting the Coalition to Improve Diagnosis, is spearheading three initiatives focused on improving diagnostic quality and safety.