Many diagnostic errors aren’t caused by one dramatic mistake. They happen through a chain of small failures that can be especially common when patients are managing busy schedules and multiple care locations.
In the New Haven area, it’s not unusual for care to involve:
- Urgent care or walk-in visits that later transition to specialists
- Repeat visits when symptoms persist or worsen
- Imaging and lab workflows routed across systems (with results reviewed later)
- Clinical decision support or automated triage tools used to prioritize patients
When automated tools are used, the risk isn’t that “technology is bad,” but that outputs can be over-weighted, misapplied, or not verified against the patient’s actual findings. If the process relies on a tool’s suggestion rather than careful confirmation, the gap between what the system predicted and what the patient needed can become legally significant.


