Most people across Minnesota place a good deal of faith in their doctors, and if you are among them, you may not typically question the diagnosis your doctor gives you or the type of treatment he or she recommends. At Hallberg Law, P.A., we recognize that, statistically speaking, you may want to reconsider seeking a second medical opinion after visiting your primary care doctor, because, in too many instances, their initial diagnoses are incorrect.
AARP reports that, nowadays, about 20% of patients who seek second medical opinions after receiving diagnoses from their primary care doctors find that their physicians misdiagnosed them. The figure comes from a study involving 286 patients, and the study also reveals that another 66% of patients received diagnoses from their primary care doctors that were at least partially inaccurate.
All in all, only about 12% of patients involved in the study found that their primary care doctors accurately diagnosed their conditions during their visits, raising new concerns about just how frequent medical misdiagnosis is occurring across the nation. Why is it that medical misdiagnosis is so prevalent across the United States, and is there anything you can do to increase the chances of receiving an accurate diagnosis?
In some cases, misdiagnosis occurs because patients can only exhibit a few hundred symptoms, but thousands of diseases exist that could be causing them. In other cases, negligence can lead to diagnostic errors. Because your odds of receiving an accurate diagnosis when visiting your family doctor are not as high as you might like to think, it is advisable that you always pursue a second opinion anytime you are facing or exhibiting signs of something that could potentially be serious.
