Failure to Diagnose

In the wrongful death settlement with DuPage Medical Group, Alexian Brothers and Ochoa family,(Personal Injury Lawyers at Cogan & Power . . .) the plaintiff attorneys recovered more than $3 million dollars in “Failure to Diagnose Case” of a patient who died of a complicated headache. The article states that the patient of their clinic with chronic headaches was seen multiple times with no tests being performed.

This showcases a familiar response to a patient returning for the same complaint multiple times. The providers were suffering from “anchor bias” – relying on the first piece of information offered when making subsequent judgments.

These errors could be avoided by using a risk-factor driven electronic health record to review old records and reminded when important risk factors are ignored. In the case, it was not differentiating between a benign headache and a life-threatening one by not asking the right questions.

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Xpress Technologies offers an electronic health record that has chief compliant templates with the pertinent risk factors built into each template, so the important questions are not ignored while improving efficiency.