Misdiagnoses represent a medical safety problem for people in New York and nationwide. Failure to diagnose properly could delay appropriate treatments or even result in death and disability. The findings of multiple studies indicate that diagnostic errors affect approximately 12 million people every year. To aid the quality improvement programs at hospitals, a researcher from Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality has created a computer program that can analyze hundreds of thousands of patient records. Called Symptom-Disease Pair Analysis of Diagnostic Error, the program applies algorithms to find patterns of mistakes.

According to a patient survey, the diagnosis of interstitial lung disease, or ILD, in New York and across the rest of the nation is usually incorrect. The result of this common misdiagnosis often results in patients experiencing emotional stress.

New York residents might have heard the unpleasant phrase ‘flesh-eating bacteria” in news reports. The proper name of this frightening condition is necrotizing fasciitis. The nickname comes from the fact that it destroys skin and muscle tissues, and the infection can be fatal if not treated. What’s even more frightening is that sometimes its symptoms are mistaken for something much more common: the flu.