When getting it wrong could cost you your life savings or your life

Did you ever watch the show _House_, starring Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House? He had the world’s worst bedside manner, but he always (eventually) came up with the correct diagnosis to save

a patient’s life. I bought every season on DVD because I loved the show. It would be great if real life and medicine were like the show House. But it’s not. In 2015, the National Academies

of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report that said, “Errors can be harmful because they can prevent or delay appropriate treatment, lead to  unnecessary or harmful

treatment, or resulting in psychological or financial repercussions.” It added, “Improving the diagnostic process is not only possible but also represents a moral, professional, and public

health imperative.” WHAT IS MEDICAL MISDIAGNOSIS? Misdiagnosis is when a medical professional incorrectly diagnoses an illness or a medical condition, leading to inaccurate treatment. This

can cause additional, if not catastrophic, costs to the patient, delay proper treatment and worsen the condition. Misdiagnosis also occurs when physicians don’t diagnose anything, assuring

you that all is well. _You can subscribe here to AARP Experience Counts, a free e-newsletter published twice a month. If you have feedback or a story idea then please contact us here._ An

apparent misdiagnosis touched my life when, a couple of years ago, a close family member was diagnosed with diabetes and given treatment for that condition. A year later, doctors found that

pancreatic cancer had already spread to many organs and her brain. She was gone before Christmas. The National Cancer Institute reports that in some people, diabetes can rapidly develop

because of a problem in the pancreas, including pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic is the third leading cause of death from cancer in the United States. No screening test exists. I’d love to say

that medical misdiagnoses are rare, but the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine states that in the U.S., more than 12 million diagnostic errors occur annually, with one in three causing

serious patient harm. However, a new study in BMJ Quality and Safety came out in July of this year. Its conclusion was similar. “Extrapolating to all diseases (including non-‘Big Three’

dangerous disease categories), we estimated total serious harms annually in the USA to be 795,000 (plausible range 598,000–1,023,000). Sensitivity analyses using more conservative

assumptions estimated 549,000 serious harms.”