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.