1 in 3 misdiagnoses result in serious injury or death

According to a paper published by the John Hopkins University School of Medicine and published in the journal Diagnosis (the official journal of the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine), 33% of medical misdiagnoses will result in severe or permanent damage, or death.

Within that dataset, it was further determined that 74.1% of this total was attributed to three main categories - cancer, vascular events and infection.

In making these determinations, the researchers studied an extensive repository of medical malpractice claims contained within a national Comparative Benchmarking Service database maintained by CRICO. CRICO is the risk management arm of the Harvard Medical Institutions.