# The Patient-Partnered Diagnostic Center of Excellence

> **NIH AHRQ R18** · MEDSTAR HEALTH RESEARCH INSTITUTE · 2024 · $985,216

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Diagnostic errors are a significant public health concern and the leading cause of harm due to medical care in
the U.S. Estimates suggest that one of every twenty patients seeking healthcare in the U.S. experiences a
diagnostic error, half of which result in serious harm. There are many reasons for diagnostic failures. Failures in
the process of diagnosis are multifocal, and may relate to patient, clinician, or systems breakdowns and lead to
potential patient harm. While there have been modest improvements in reducing diagnostic error, much of this
research has focused on defining the scope of the problem and developing tools for doctors to prevent errors,
largely ignoring the critical role of the patient in finding and fixing errors in their own healthcare. Our
teams prior work shows that patients and their families provide valuable information often missing in medical
records that can inform safety problems across different care settings; this includes diagnostic safety events.
Furthermore, making accurate and timely diagnoses requires a patient-centered, team-based approach involving
collaboration among multiple healthcare professionals, with the patient and their family at its core and recognition
of the importance of input from patients across the spectrum of patient populations. The Patient-Partnered
Diagnostic Center of Excellence (the Center) will fill these gaps by conducting research that has been
identified and prioritized by patients as important to advance diagnostic safety research.
The Center is governed by experienced patient-partnered scientists and directed by a committee of patients and
an advisory panel of experts who collectively will develop expertise in Safety I error detection and prevention to
decrease diagnosis error frequency and Safety II methods of resilience to improve safer care. The Center takes
the novel approach of examining diagnostic safety using a Safety I and II lens from the patient's experience of
the diagnostic journey. We are committed to meaningfully partnering with minority and equity seeking
communities to drive meaningful solutions with broad application for reaching historically marginalized patients.
Our Center convenes around three aims, organized into four workstreams led by a co-PI/co-I with demonstrated
expertise in that workstream. Our workstreams will work together to inform solution development, cocreating
improvements in detection and driving diagnostic safety system resilience in partnership with diverse patients.
Our Center benefits from strong scientific expertise in diverse, relevant disciplines; diverse organizational and
cultural research sites partnered with care delivery systems; but most importantly meaningful engages patients
and community partners in codesign of solutions to prevent diagnostic errors. The Center's findings will inform
other Diagnostic Centers of Excellence and patient-centered outcomes research. Our aggressive attention to
the inclusion of equity s...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10923866
- **Project number:** 5R18HS029356-03
- **Recipient organization:** MEDSTAR HEALTH RESEARCH INSTITUTE
- **Principal Investigator:** Traber L Giardina
- **Activity code:** R18 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** AHRQ
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $985,216
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-09-30 → 2026-09-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10923866

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10923866, The Patient-Partnered Diagnostic Center of Excellence (5R18HS029356-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10923866. Licensed CC0.

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