Diagnostic error

Diagnostic error is the failure to establish an accurate and timely explanation of a patient's health problem, or to communicate that explanation to the patient. It is the leading cause of serious harm in healthcare, responsible for an estimated 40,000–80,000 deaths annually in the United States alone, yet it receives far less attention than medication errors or surgical mistakes. The discrepancy in attention is itself a feedback topology problem: diagnostic errors are harder to detect, harder to attribute, and harder to litigate than procedural errors, so the feedback loop that would drive institutional investment in prevention is structurally attenuated. The field of diagnostic safety challenges the traditional medical error framing, arguing that diagnosis is not a single decision but a distributed cognitive process that resists the accountability structures designed for simpler failures.