The diagnostic process and medical errors

The past 15 years, since the publication of "To Err Is Human" report, has seen a great deal of progress in projects that promote patient safety, especially in programs such as increasing hand washing, identifying patients, surgical checklists or changes in nursing care, but on the other hand the diagnostic process continues to be a matter almost exclusive to medical work although it’s known that this is a very sensitive area for the safety of patients. This new report from the National Academy of Medicine (formerly Institute of Medicine), "Improving Diagnosis in Healthcare," is a follow up document to the aforementioned one, specifically focused on diagnostic errors.

The report defines the diagnostic error as the failure to obtain a detailed, timely explanation of a health problem. Experts have also included in the definition the physician’s inability to know how to explain the diagnosis to the patient. According to the report, diagnostic errors would have an incidence on medical consultations of 5%, accounting for 10% of deaths, 6-7% of adverse reactions in hospitals, as well as the leading cause of litigation in the health area (the figures correspond to the US).

Personal health data: a new treasure for science

It’s time to make disease give, not just take. Find out more. http://t.co/m3ebqiyi78 pic.twitter.com/gZlJ78QPgp

— PatientsLikeMe (@patientslikeme) juliol 16, 2014

At seeing a survey by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) one fact stands out: 94% of Americans who are diagnosed with a chronic disease and are also social network users would be willing to donate their data to encourage research thus helping other patients like them.

In this context, the website "PatientsLikeMe", the most developed patients social network in the world, has launched a campaign to encourage the donation of data, so I invite you to see this promotional video: "Your data has a heartbeat that gives life to medical research.”

Oncological Care: What does the IOM Report reveal?

Ten years after the first report, the Institute of Medicine has published a new study on the quality of cancer care in the United States, forced, according to experts, because the situation is far from improving. To better understand this work, we have to contextualize it in the United States, where they have serious problems of access to cancer care, coordination between professionals and exaggerated costs of clinical processes.

On the other hand, cancer care in our country is, obviously, more accessible and more coordinated than the United States, but nevertheless you will agree with me that we lack, by contrast, the evaluation and analytical capacity of Americans, and for this reason I believe that the findings presented in this report should teach us something with the intention of overcoming our own inefficiencies, because we do have them.

The IOM expert committee concluded that the model of cancer care in America is in crisis, mainly due to three factors: a) the clinical process too often does not focus on the patients’ preferences, b) many patients only receive palliative care at the end of life, and c) clinical decisions too often are not based on evidence.