The concept of medical errors in the modern healthcare systems

The majority of patients treatment begins and ends outside the hospital, so the analysis and study of the subject of medical errors should primarily focus on hospitals. Defects of medical care provided by physicians in clinics are found in approximately in 30% of cases. More often errors happen in collecting history, using basic methods of medical examination of the patient and prevention recommendations. The frequency of diagnoses mismatch when in case of a referral to hospital examination and during the visit, according to different authors, varies in the range of 10-40%. According to various sources, the discrepancy between clinical and sectional diagnoses in hospitals of mixed type for adults balances around 11% (according to independent surveys among medical negligence solicitors), and the unrecognised rare diseases in this index are not significantly reflected. The majority of diagnoses with discrepancies account for serious conditions - mostly lung and gastric cancer, tuberculosis, pneumonia, atherosclerosis and its complications. (more…)