IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oec/elsaad/176-en.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The economics of diagnostic safety

Author

Listed:
  • Luke Slawomirski
  • David Kelly
  • Katherine de Bienassis
  • Kadri-Ann Kallas
  • Niek Klazinga

Abstract

Diagnosis is complex and iterative, therefore liable to error in accurately and timely identifying underlying health problems, and communicating these to patients. Up to 15% of diagnoses are estimated to be inaccurate, delayed or wrong. Diagnostic errors negatively impact patient outcomes and increase use of healthcare resources. The direct financial burden of misdiagnosis, underdiagnosis and overdiagnosis combined is estimated to be 17.5% of total healthcare expenditure, or 1.8% of GDP in a typical OECD country where one tenth of GDP is spent on health care. Reducing diagnostic error has the potential for large cost savings through improvements in healthcare efficiency and reductions in patient harm. Halving rates of diagnostic error could lead to savings of 8% of healthcare expenditure. This report 1) defines the scope of diagnostic error, 2) illustrates the burden of diagnostic error in commonly diagnosed conditions, 3) estimates the direct costs of diagnostic error, and 4) provides policy options to improve diagnostic safety.

Suggested Citation

  • Luke Slawomirski & David Kelly & Katherine de Bienassis & Kadri-Ann Kallas & Niek Klazinga, 2025. "The economics of diagnostic safety," OECD Health Working Papers 176, OECD Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:oec:elsaad:176-en
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oec:elsaad:176-en. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eloecfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.