View clinical trials related to Diagnostic Errors.
Filter by:This study seeks to link a group of hospitals to measure and share the rates of diagnostic errors, to understand underlying causes of diagnostic errors, and develop ways that hospitals, clinicians, and patients can work together to avoid diagnostic errors and harms due to those errors. The investigators will test how data sharing and collaboration improve diagnostic processes and develop approaches which can be sustained into the future. The approach represents a novel application of rigorous outcome adjudication to the problem of inpatient diagnostic errors using a learning health system model.
This project will introduce and evaluate an intervention designed to improve diagnostic decision making. The intervention will attempt to increase clinician mindfulness and reduce environmental distractions to promote focused thinking. A meta-cognitive intervention using a structured checklist will be evaluated to identify improvement in diagnostic and therapeutic decision-making and examine the role of mindfulness and architectural design in enhancing patient safety.
Preventing contextual errors requires heightening clinician responsiveness to clues that there are contextual factors during the clinical encounter, in real time. These clues, termed contextual red flags are evident in two sources: the medical record and from patients directly. An effective intervention would prompt clinicians to determine whether there are underlying contextual factors that could be addressed in the care plan, averting contextual error. This desirable process is termed contextual probing. While clinical decision support (CDS) has been used to provide physicians with timely biomedical information at the point of care to prevent errors and promote appropriate care, this technology also affords an opportunity to draw physician attention to both contextual red flags and contextual factors in order to avert contextual errors. This study assesses the potential of "contextualized CDS" to improve contextualization of care through a randomized controlled intervention trial, with assessment measures of both patient health care outcomes and averted costs associated with overuse and misuse of medical services. The three hypotheses are that CDS: 1. Reduces contextual error: CDS tools that inform clinicians of contextual factors and prompt them to explore contextual red flags should result in a reduction in contextual error. 2. Improve health care outcomes: Contextualized CDS predicts improved health care outcomes defined as a partial or full resolution of the contextual red flag (e.g. elevated HgB A1c) after the index visit. 3. Reduces avoidable health care costs: Contextualized CDS is associated with a reduction in misuse and overuse of inappropriate or unnecessary medical services.
Diagnostic errors have been reported frequently in patient with pulmonary embolism since symptoms are not specific. However, there is only scarce evidence that the delay associated with diagnostic errors may impact patient prognosis. The aim of this study is to determine the frequency of diagnostic errors and if they are associated with more severe pulmonary embolism in term of initial presentation and complications.
The proposal will focus on 3 specific, high-risk, pediatric ambulatory diagnostic errors each representing a unique dimension of diagnostic assessment: evaluation of symptoms, evaluation of signs and follow-up of diagnostic tests. Adolescent depression (i.e. symptoms) affects nearly 10% of teenagers, is misdiagnosed in almost 75% of adolescents and causes significant morbidity. Pediatric elevated blood pressure (signs) is misdiagnosed in 74-87% of patients, often due to inaccurate application of blood pressure parameters that change based on age, gender and height. Actionable pediatric laboratory values (diagnostic tests) are potentially delayed up to 26% of the time in preliminary investigations and 7-65% in adults, leading to harm and malpractice claims. The investigators propose to conduct a multisite, prospective, stepped wedge cluster randomized trial testing a quality improvement collaborative (QIC) intervention within the American Academy of Pediatrics' Quality Improvement Innovation Networks (QuIIN) to reduce the incidence of pediatric primary care diagnostic errors. QuIIN is a national network of over 300 primary care practices, ranging from tertiary care academic medical centers to single practitioner private practices, interested in and experienced with QICs. Because many processes are likely to be common across diagnostic errors in outpatient settings, a multifaceted intervention, such as a QIC, has a high likelihood of success and broad applicability across populations. Preparatory inquiries to QuIIN primary care providers suggest high interest in reducing these 3 diagnostic errors and provider agreement with randomization to evaluate diagnostic error interventions. Practices will be randomized to one of three groups, with each group collecting retrospective baseline data on one error above, and then intervening to reduce that error during the first eight months. Each group will concurrently collect control data on an error they are not intervening on during those eight months. Following those eight months, the groups will continue intervening on their first error, begin intervening on the error they were a control site for, and begin collecting data on the third error for which they will be a control site for. Finally, in the final eight months, all groups will intervene on all three errors. A second wave of practices will be recruited to join the groups after eight months and will only intervene on two of the three errors.
Diagnostic errors are common, but they have been largely ignored by patient safety groups. Diagnostic errors are often traced to physicians' cognitive biases and failed heuristics (mental shortcuts). We know how these faulty thinking processes lead to diagnostic errors, but we know little about how to resist them. Faulty thinking has plagued other high-risk, high-reliability professionals, such as airline pilots and nuclear plant operators. These professions have learned from their mistakes and have developed checklists to help prevent them. The medical profession has started to use checklists and time-out periods in the operating room and intensive care unit, but these strategies have not been used to reduce diagnostic errors. The most common reason that physicians fail to make the correct diagnosis is that they never consider it. This failure could potentially be prevented if the physician took a time-out to review a checklist. Our broad long-term goal is to reduce diagnostic errors by developing interventions that help counter faulty diagnostic thinking. The specific aims of this project are to (1) determine the feasibility of taking a diagnostic time-out in the acute outpatient setting (urgent care clinic and emergency department), (2) determine if new diagnostic possibilities are seriously considered as a result of the time-out and checklist, and (3) compare the initial differential diagnosis with the new differential diagnosis following the time-out, and with the discharge diagnosis documented in the medical record, and with the "final" diagnosis based on a one-month follow-up. To achieve these aims, the investigators will ask 5 urgent-care physicians to complete a time-out procedure for 10 diagnostically challenging adult patients and 5 physicians will serve as controls (no time out) for 10 diagnostically challenging patients (total of 100 patients). The investigator will ask the intervention physicians to take a 2-minute time-out to review a complaint-specific differential-diagnosis checklist, which includes the differential diagnosis for 60 common presenting complaints, such as dyspnea and chest pain. The time-out will occur at the conclusion of the history and physical exam. We will use descriptive statistics and qualitative methods to characterize physicians' reactions to the time-out and checklists. We will use this pilot project to plan a larger study that will determine the risks and benefits of diagnostic time-outs and checklists.