Impaired Pathologist Misdiagnoses Patients, Resulting in One Death

[Napoleon1801]

Not good.


FAYETTEVILLE (KFSM) -- Officials with the VA Medical Center in Fayetteville and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced an investigation Monday after a pathologist was found to be "impaired" and misdiagnosed patients, resulting in at least one death.

Fayetteville VA Medical Center Pathologist Fired, Nearly 20,000 Local Veterans At Risk

"We will be doing a complete 100 percent review of all cases that were interpreted and diagnosed by this impaired provider," she said. "We will be going from October of 2018 back to October of 2005. This will take a significant amount of time -- several months."

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[Pathbusiness]

How did he see 20,000 patients? I haven't seen one yet.

 

[Crabbygas]

So they have reviewed 900 cases and found 7 misdiagnosis. Would be interesting to see how many misdiagnoses they found reviewing 900 cases of one of their other pathologists. I understand working impaired is not cool. But less than 1% error seems not so bad especially since the reviewers were likely not blinded to the facts of why they were reviewing the cases.

 

[SetecAstronomy]

TL;DR

Did the article define misdiagnosis? I wonder how many were minor discrepancies...

 

[AZpath]

Read the article. They suggest that some are serious and one is believe linked to a death.

 

[ScubaV]

Parks said they had seven cases of misdiagnosis by the pathologist so far based on internal reviews. One of those cases may have resulted in the recent death of a local veteran, according to Parks.

She said more than 900 cases had already been reviewed, with the seven misdiagnosed cases being found. Of those, one of the patients had died, and an investigation was under way to determine how much of an impact that misdiagnosis had on the patient's condition and death.

There's an early implication that one patient died because of the misdiagnosis, but the later quote seems to only state that one of those seven died and may or may not be related at all to the diagnosis. If the pathologist missed a tubular adenoma, but the patient died of a heart attack that's not exactly a causal relationship.

Regardless, this pathologist deserves whatever job/licensing repercussions they get. This was their second chance after completing an impairment program. "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

 

[WEBB PINKERTON]

I have CAP inspected some VA labs and they are not very impressive operations. They need to privatize the VA and consolidate the majority of those laboratories. 13 years worth of this pathologist's case isn't that much at a VA. I have seen places where they were signing out about a months worth of work for me in an entire year.