Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Bad test results often not reported to U.S. patients - Yahoo! News

Bad test results often not reported to U.S. patients - Yahoo! News

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Doctors in the United States fail to tell patients about abnormal test results 7 percent of the time, or a rate of about 1 out of every 14 tests, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

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Casalino and colleagues analyzed more than 5,000 patient records from 23 physician practices across the country, looking at screening tests for conditions such as high cholesterol, diabetes, blood tests for colon cancer and mammograms.

They found doctors failed to inform patients 7.1 percent of the time. Performance at individual practices varied widely. Some practices always informed patients, and some failed to inform patients 26 percent of the time....

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