Emergency Medical Minute

Contributor: Nicholas Tsipis, MD Educational Pearls: What study was Dr. Tsipis talking about? In December of 2022, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) put out a study titled “Diagnostic Errors in the Emergency Department: A Systematic Review.” This study triggered many news stories from prominent outlets with headlines such as, “More than 7 million incorrect diagnoses made in US emergency rooms every year, government report finds,” from CNN, and “E.R. Doctors Misdiagnose Patients With Unusual Symptoms,” from the New York Times. What was the response? Matt Bivens, MD from Emergency Medicine News responded to the original study in an article titled, “AHRQ Errors Report was ‘Outright Unconscionable.’” Dr. Bivens points out that AHRQ’s biggest claims – including that 5.7% of patients are misdiagnosed in the ED and 2.0% suffer an adverse event as a result – were based only on three small studies out of Canada, Spain, and Switzerland (combined n=1,758). Spain and Switzerland did not ha