At least one in every 20 adults who seeks medical care in a U.S. emergency room or community health clinic may walk away with the wrong diagnosis, according to a new analysis that estimates that 12 million Americans a year could be affected by such errors.
Of those misdiagnosis mistakes, about 6 million could potentially cause harm, according to patient safety expert Dr. Hardeep Singh, who is the first to provide robust population-level data on the impact of the problem in outpatient settings.
