
Reduce Costly Medical Errors and Be Rewarded
Every year, around seven billion samples are tested in US laboratories alone. It is a critical part of the diagnostic process, contributing to 70 percent of all medical decisions that are made. Alarmingly, it is estimated that up to 98,0001 people die in hospitals each year from preventable medical errors, making misdiagnosis the eighth leading cause of death in the US, ahead of motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer and AIDS.
One of the most common and preventable causes leading to misdiagnosis comes from a surprisingly simple step in the process – the labeling of tissue samples.
1 ‘To Err is Human’, Institute of Medicine, November 1999