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This commentary persuasively argues that patient safety research and healthcare policy initiatives — which currently focus almost exclusively on preventing treatment errors — should be expanded to find solutions to harmful public health consequences of diagnostic errors.
About 40,000 to 80,000 in-hospital deaths are attributed to misdiagnosis annually (JAMA 2002; 288:2405). Neurological disorders are not immune; for example, nearly 1 in 10 strokes are initially unrecognized (Ann Neurol 2008; 64[suppl 12]:S17). The authors cite other evidence that considerable morbidity and mortality result from misdiagnosis in U.S. healthcare. They discuss several proposed strategies for remedying research and policy gaps on diagnostic errors. These include …