Doctors in New York City and across the nation are devoted to providing consistent and correct aid to the patients they serve. Unfortunately, even skilled and ethical physicians can commit errors in diagnosis at times. Not only do such mistakes have the potential to cause serious patient harm; they also lead to massive wasted health care expenses as patients receive proper treatments for ailments that they don’t actually have.

New York residents who are concerned with recent changes in recommendations for breast cancer screening might want to consider the latest statistics related to another cancer screening scenario. The instances of prostate cancer screenings were more frequent prior to a change in recommendations by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. In 2012, the group announced that there might be more harm than good coming from systematic screening for prostate cancer. Among the issues of concern was the fact that most cancers being detected were slow-growing. In fact, more men died of other issues after a diagnosis of prostate cancer than actually died of prostate cancer at the time of this change.

According to a new study, cardiac patients in New York and nationwide are often misdiagnosed with an aspirin allergy and taken off of aspirin therapy without ever being tested by an allergist. This means that many patients needlessly lose the benefits of an effective and inexpensive cardiovascular treatment that has few side effects.