Diagnostic Uncertainty Cases from Primary Care Practice Inquiry Meetings, 2002-2015

Lucia S. Sommers of the University of California System analyzed 459 case scenarios where primary care practitioners presented patients involving uncertainty to peers in 'Practice Inquiry Colleague Group' meetings held in 17 San Francisco-Bay Area practices between 2002 and 2015. The dataset includes 258 cases (56%) specifically involving diagnostic uncertainty, with patient characteristics, clinician uncertainty statements, peer responses, and follow-up information. It was created to better define diagnostic uncertainty in primary care and examine how clinicians respond to being 'stuck'.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the types of clinical scenarios that cause diagnostic uncertainty based on the described case log data.
• Studying clinician responses and peer advice for diagnostic dilemmas based on the described meeting discussions.
• Investigating the role of mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions in diagnostic uncertainty based on the finding that these were potential contributors for 25% of patients.
• Examining diagnostic adverse events and patient harm based on the 14% of cases where such events were discussed.

Strengths

• Contains 459 case scenarios from a longitudinal study spanning 13 years (2002-2015).
• Focuses on 258 specific diagnostic uncertainty cases, providing a concentrated sample.
• Includes multi-faceted data per case: uncertainty statements, patient info, peer responses, and follow-up.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count for the specific diagnostic uncertainty subset is provided (258), but the full data structure is unknown.
• Geographic coverage is limited to 17 practices in the San Francisco-Bay Area.

Provenance

Source

University of California System, via paperswithcode.

Collection Method

Analysis of case log data from confidential 'Practice Inquiry Colleague Group' meetings.

Time Range

2002-2015

Geography

17 primary care practices in the San Francisco-Bay Area, USA.