Communication breakdowns and diagnostic errors: a radiology perspective

Abstract

Timely and accurate communication is essential to safe and effective health care. Despite increased awareness over the past decade of the frequency of medical errors and greater efforts directed towards improving patient safety, patient harm due to communication breakdowns remains a significant problem. Communication problems related to diagnostic testing may account for nearly half of all errors made by typical primary care physicians in their medical practices. This article provides an overview of communication breakdowns in the context of radiology related diagnostic errors. In radiology, communication breakdowns between radiologists, referring clinicians, and patients can lead to failure of critical information to be relayed, resulting in delayed or missed diagnosis. New technologies, such electronic health records (EHRs), contribute to the increasing complexity of communication in health care, but if used correctly, they can provide several benefits to safe and effective communication. To address the complexity of communication breakdowns, a multifaceted sociotechnical approach is needed to address both technical and non-technical aspects of health care delivery. The article also provides some future directions in reducing communication breakdowns related to diagnostic testing, including proactive risk assessment of communication practices using recently released SAFER self-assessment guides.

Keywords: electronic communication; electronic health records; health information technology; medical informatics; primary care; radiology; test results.