I don’t know about you, but I was stunned by the findings from a recent report published by Coverys, a national liability insurer, which I feel should put the entire lab industry on notice that it plays a crucial role in keeping patients safe. According to the report, which examined over 10,000 claims in an effort to understand the chief drivers of medical malpractice suits, 52 percent of the claims were riddled with lab testing-related errors.1 Either the wrong test was ordered, or the test was incorrectly administered, or the results misinterpreted.
These findings aren’t just a random outlier, either. In another concerning report, the ECRI Institute listed diagnostic errors as its number one patient safety concern for 2018.2
As a physician, I know that many of these errors can originate on the provider side. It’s not always all that simple to choose the right test based on the right diagnosis. And if that task is delegated to someone else, even more can get lost in translation before the order is actually submitted to the lab.
But in my additional experience as the founder of a lab interoperability company, I also see the diagnostic safety issue as one that labs are in an influential position to solve. Any lab that does so will become the established, trusted facility in their healthcare community.
You can view the rest of the article here to learn about the three reforms labs can institute—helping to create what I call “the Perfect Order” process.
