JAMA internal medicine
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JAMA internal medicine · Mar 2013
Association of hospice patients' income and care level with place of death.
Terminally ill patients with lower incomes are less likely to die at home, even with hospice care. ⋯ Patients with limited resources may be less likely to die at home, especially if they are not able to access needed support beyond what is available with routine hospice care.
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Diagnostic errors are an understudied aspect of ambulatory patient safety. ⋯ Diagnostic errors identified in our study involved a large variety of common diseases and had significant potential for harm. Most errors were related to process breakdowns in the patient-practitioner clinical encounter. Preventive interventions should target common contributory factors across diagnoses, especially those that involve data gathering and synthesis in the patient-practitioner encounter.