Diagnostic testing and outcomes

When diagnostic testing leads to harm: a new outcomes-based approach for laboratory medicine

There are five causes of testing-related diagnostic error:

• An inappropriate test is ordered
• An appropriate test is not ordered
• An appropriate test result is misapplied
• An appropriate test is ordered, but a delay occurs somewhere in the total testing process
• The result of an appropriately ordered test is inaccurate

If we know that that these are the causes, are there any measures available?

In Lundberg’s model, the value of laboratory results is influenced by events
that occur before the sample reaches the laboratory and after the results are released
from it. His model encompasses the physician’s cognitive involvement at the start of
the process and at the end.