{"id":310,"date":"2022-12-09T13:48:28","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T13:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simed.wpengine.com\/?p=310"},"modified":"2024-01-22T16:21:54","modified_gmt":"2024-01-22T16:21:54","slug":"the-risk-of-an-incomplete-patient-assessment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simedpr.com\/en\/the-risk-of-an-incomplete-patient-assessment\/","title":{"rendered":"The Risk of an Incomplete Patient Assessment"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Inadequate patient assessment is a contributing factor<\/a> in more than half of all medical malpractice cases.<\/p><\/td><\/tr>

Per CRICO\u2019s national Comparative Benchmarking System<\/a> (CBS), the top category of factors that contribute to allegations of medical malpractice is clinical judgment: for cases involving a high-severity<\/a> injury (including death), 77% involve at least one clinical judgment issue. When we look at the total incurred losses for those cases, 88% of financial reserves (open cases) and indemnity payments (closed cases) is associated with clinical judgment factors.<\/p>

\u201cClinical judgment\u201d encompasses a broad array of decision making and actions, from making rushed treatment decisions to taking too long to order a test or referral. Thus, judgment issues are found across all specialties and settings, and they sidetrack clinicians at all levels of practice.<\/p>

Drilling into the clinical judgment issues, we find that breakdowns in patient assessment (56% of high-severity cases) are most commonly noted. Eight of the top 20 contributing factors found in high-severity malpractice cases filed from 2007\u20132016 are related to patient assessment.<\/p>

Because multiple contributing factors may be assigned, any single event may reflect multiple missteps in the patient assessment process (e.g., the lack of differential diagnosis might preclude the appreciation of relevant symptoms or test ordering). Of course, preventable adverse outcomes often reflect a constellation of missed opportunities, so other clinical judgments may be involved as well: specialty referrals, treatment regimens, and patient monitoring are commonly concurrent factors.<\/p>

Obviously, analysis of malpractice data offers hindsight unavailable to clinicians assessing patients in real time: testing and referring every patient is not appropriate care. Clinicians with a consistent and comprehensive process\u2014supported by effective systems\u2014should be able to trust their judgment. At the same time, clinicians need to be aware of\u2014and act upon\u2014 the cues that signal a discordance between their assessment and the patient\u2019s experience:<\/p>

Additional Material<\/p>