SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY

Study: Bad Test Results Often Don't Reach Patients

from the Baltimore Sun

CHICAGO (Associated Press) -- No news isn't necessarily good news for patients waiting for the results of medical tests. The first study of its kind finds doctors failed to inform patients of abnormal cancer screenings and other test results 1 out of 14 times.

The failure rate was higher at some doctors' offices, as high as 26 percent at one office. Few medical practices had explicit methods for how to tell patients, leaving each doctor to come up with a system.

In some offices, patients were told if they didn't hear anything, they could assume their test results were normal. ... The findings are published in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.