Some Patients Not Informed About Abnormal Test Results
25/06/2009
A new report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine indicates that clinicians and their staff often fail to inform some patients, or fail to document informing patients, about abnormal results on outpatient medical tests
"Ordering and following up on outpatient laboratory and imaging tests consumes large amounts of physician time and is important in the diagnostic process," the authors write as background information in the article. "Diagnostic errors are the most frequent cause of malpractice claims in the United States; testing-related mistakes can lead to serious diagnostic errors. There are many steps in the testing process, which extends from ordering a test to providing appropriate follow-up; an error in any one of these steps can have lethal consequences." --
(Arch Intern Med. 2009;169[12]:1123-1129.
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a cura di M. Caputo