Retrospective Blinded Review of Interpretational Diagnostic Discrepancies in Surgical Pathology: 18 Years of Experience at a Tertiary Care Facility

Publication Date

2014

Journal Title

Ann Clin Lab Sci

Abstract

We evaluated our quality assurance (QA) methods and QA consensus conference model for assessing the rate of interpretational diagnostic errors and trend of errors. Using monthly QA reports from review of frozen section- permanent section correlation and amended reports, all cases with interpretational diagnostic errors were identified. Retrospective blinded review of study cases were independently performed by all staff pathologist and subsequently discussed in QA conference sessions. 277 (. 07%) interpretational errors were identified from 1993-2010. Errors with patient consequences comprised 15% of all errors, 4% of which were major errors. More than half (57%) of the errors were identified on review of frozen section-permanent section correlation and accounted for 64% of all errors with patient consequence and 45% of major errors. Comparison of errors between two equally divided time periods (1993-2001 and 2002-2010) showed significant error reduction (p

Volume Number

44

Issue Number

4

Pages

469-475

Document Type

Article

EPub Date

2014/11/02

Status

Faculty, Northwell Researcher

Facility

School of Medicine; Northwell Health

Primary Department

Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

PMID

25361935

For the public and Northwell Health campuses

Share

COinS