Misdiagnoses Aren’t Killing Or Disabling 800,000 People A Year

Why the evidence doesn’t really show that misdiagnoses are a leading cause of death in the United States

I have a fun personal story about stethoscopes, but since this is an image caption I’ll have to tell it to you all another time. Photo by Hush Naidoo Jade Photography on Unsplash

As a society, we absolutely love a story where healthcare is the villain. There’s a regular parade of news where some research study seems to indicate that healthcare professionals are destroying lives. Every once in a while, the myth that medical error is the third leading cause of death rears its head, despite the obvious fact that this cannot possibly be true.

This week, a new spate of headlines has popped up with a very similar vibe. If you believe the news, missed diagnoses — or misdiagnosis, where doctors fail to diagnose people correctly in a timely manner — is causing a truly astonishing amount of suffering in the United States. According to a recently published piece of research, nearly 800,000 people either die or are permanently disabled each year due to misdiagnosis in the US.

Fortunately for those of us who see doctors regularly, this estimate is extremely unreliable. The true number of people harmed by misdiagnosis is probably drastically lower than 800k a year.

The Study