Impact Analysis of Diagnostic Errors on Healthcare Delivery: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Background: There is need to collate the evidences on the prevalence of diagnostic errors and their influence on hazardous outcomes to affect efficiency, cost and safety in healthcare delivery. Objectives: This review addressed diagnostic errors in terms of epidemiology, hazards, impacts, challenges to suggest holistic recommendations to all the stakeholders, researchers and administrators. Methods: Electronic public domains viz. PubMed, SCOPUS, GoogleScholar, ResearchGate. and manual search on diagnostic errors and interventions implemented by clinician in clinical environment, searched for literatures published between January 2005 and June 2025 for common errors concerning the diagnosis in the practice directed towards the patient, direct and indirect repercussions on health and financial and operational aspects of healthcare, challenges, research and interventions to improve patient safety by checklists using PRISMA reporting guidelines. Results: A total of 291 articles were screened of which 28 studies met inclusion criteria of our review. Data extraction was done by two groups, each group comprising two independent investigators from Review (n=20), Cohort study (n=2), Cross-sectional, (n=3), Controlled intervention (n=2), Invited Commentary (n=1). WHO check list, digitalization and AI are showing potential solution for error reduction amid ethical, legal, quality assurance issues. Conclusions: Our analyses revealed evidence on prevalence, risk correlates and interventions to limit DEs being feasible in clinical settings across High Income Countries (HICs) and Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). A comprehensive approach is needed to ensure safety by quality of care at every patient interface, capacity building and systems approach to enhance accuracy and ensure updating.

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