Hospitals are required to put the results of medical tests in electronic records, often before a doctor has a chance to review them. This can lead to misunderstandings in patients.
Many patients are seeing and reading their test results before their own doctor.
Dr. Cathryn Lapedis, a pathologist with University of Michigan Health, says the reports are not written with the patient in mind.
“We saw that, in the standard reports, people really weren't able to understand basic information about their diagnosis. So, for example, in our standard University report, only 39% of people were able to accurately tell that the report showed cancer.”
Lapedis and her team created patient-friendly pathology reports. In a comparison of prostate cancer reports, 90% of patients were able to accurately identify when it showed cancer.
The feature is not yet available at all hospitals.
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