From C. Wright, Clarkson, Western Australia
The recent article about hospital software bugs (19 May, p 34) caught my eye because I have received no response to a complaint about a related problem. This resulted in a false diagnosis of a rare cancer being entered into my records, possibly twice, at two major public medical centres in Australia.
The first I knew about this was when a family doctor asked during an unrelated consultation, with a quizzical look, whether I had cancer. The name of the cancer incorrectly entered into my records was similar to that of an extremely rare but quite mild disease that I had been correctly diagnosed with in the 1990s. Both were named after the same doctor, who discovered them, as were a few other diseases.
As I recall, my correct diagnosis was absent from my records. I assumed that the clinic's software hadn't recognised my diagnosis when someone tried to enter it and had defaulted to the name of the cancer instead.
I was even more shocked years later when a letter from a specialist at a hospital listed the cancer – but not my correct diagnosis – as one of my existing conditions. I don't know whether the error occurred independently. When I explained the problem to one doctor, his response was to delete my correct diagnosis from my medical records.
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A false diagnosis taking the place of a correct one on a patient's medical records has many potential negative consequences, especially when a serious disease is confused with a mild one. I hope someone in the world of medical IT will take this issue seriously and fix it. I also hope all patients with rare diagnoses are warned to check their medical records.
