ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case study on a recent project that engaged healthcare consumers in the co-production of recommendations for reducing diagnostic error and improving diagnostic quality. Diagnostic error, or diagnoses that are wrong, missed, or delayed, is a serious issue in healthcare. Most proposals to reduce diagnostic error focus on physicians and healthcare systems; few interventions have sought to reduce diagnostic error by empowering patients in the diagnostic process. The Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine, a national non-profit organization in the health field, plans to use the recommendations to develop strategic plans, policy statements, and research agendas, as well as to create a patient engagement "tool kit" that can be used in healthcare settings to help patients and providers coproduce during the diagnostic process. Overall, this project demonstrates that healthcare consumers have the capacity to engage in complex discussions and that the experience of co-production can have meaningful individual level effects.
