Saving Lives and Reducing Health Care Waste by Improving Diagnosis in Medicine Act

Key Points

• The bill creates a new federal research and quality improvement program focused on diagnostic errors, funded at $45 million a year from 2027 through 2031, to study why diagnoses go wrong and spread fixes to hospitals and clinics.
• A new voluntary reporting system would let patients and families report their own experiences with diagnostic errors and near misses, with legal protections ensuring these reports cannot be used against anyone in court.
• The bill funds research centers that connect scientists directly with clinics in different parts of the country to test and refine ways of catching diagnostic mistakes earlier.
• A new Interagency Council on Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, involving the VA, CDC, CMS, FDA, and NIH, must publish a national strategic plan within 18 months of the law taking effect to identify and reduce barriers to better diagnosis.
• The bill also expands federal fellowship funding so students and researchers can specialize in studying and fixing diagnostic errors.