Diagnostic Ability and Quality of Care

Quality of care often is seen as how physicians and other health care providers treat patients with a given disease.  Accurately diagnosing the disease a patient has, however, is in almost all cases a necessary condition to provide high-quality treatment.  Nevertheless, a physician’s ability to accurately diagnose a disease is rarely measured within exsting quality…

Do doctors make mistakes?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is yes.  However, you may be surprised at the frequency with which doctors make mistakes according to a recent article in JAMA. The study reports that more than 2 in 5 patients receives at least one misdiagnosis. In 190 cases, a total of 68 unique diagnoses were missed. Most missed diagnoses were…

ICD-10 is coming…ICD-10 is coming

Many health insurers (public and private) reimburse doctors based on the patient’s diagnosis. If you treat a patient for a more severe illness during a inpatient stay, Medicare pays you more money. Physicians use procedures to bill insurers for the care they provided. How do insurers know the patient’s diagnosis and the procedures providers perform?…