Women are 50%-75% more likely than men to experience adverse drug reactions, according to High Rise Financial. | Photo via Pixabay
What you probably already know: Medical misdiagnosis is estimated to cost hundreds of billions of dollars annually in the U.S. The average American household budget for health care is already stretched thin, as law firm High Rise Financial finds about 11% of a family’s income goes toward premiums and out-of-pocket costs. To cover medical bills, roughly one in three adults (more than 82 million people) are skipping meals, reducing utilities, driving less to save on gas, stretching out doses of prescription drugs or borrowing money, according to a March report from the West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America.
Why it matters: Women bear a disproportionate share of this burden, both in and out of the emergency room and across every category of disease, from cardiovascular to psychiatric. High Rise Financial’s analysis suggests they’re 20%-30% more likely to be misdiagnosed overall, 50% more likely after a heart attack and 33% more likely during a stroke. Women with an autoimmune disease (four in five sufferers are women) spend nearly four years seeking a correct diagnosis, while those with endometriosis can wait seven to 10 years. For cancer, women wait an average of two-and-a-half years longer than men for an accurate diagnosis. The financial toll compounds over time, with women paying for appointments, repeat testing and treatments that fail to address the real issue. When a single MRI costs up to $3,500 and an overnight hospital stay averages $2,600, misdiagnosis can quickly become financially devastating.
What it means: Two major structural problems are at work here. Harvard’s Dr. Anupam Jena told Newsweek that implicit and explicit biases — such as clinicians spending less time listening to women or overlooking their symptoms — increase the risk of misdiagnosis. In the same vein, the health care system increasingly relies on diagnostic technology while giving clinicians less time to listen to patients and evaluate their full spectrum of symptoms, leading to more tests and higher costs, especially for those who are misdiagnosed. Second in the one-two punch is the fact that modern medicine is largely built on research conducted on men, so diseases that present differently in women (e.g., heart attack symptoms) may go undetected or caught too late. The stakes are stark, with roughly 795,000 Americans dying or becoming permanently disabled each year due to misdiagnosis. (Some estimates put the figure closer to 1 million.) It all translates to higher household costs, whether through prolonged hospital stays, lost income or ongoing care expenses.
What happens next: Not much, if current trends continue. Researchers who have studied this for decades say the problem is not improving — some data suggests it’s even worsening in certain areas. Experts say meaningful change requires increased research funding (particularly for women’s health), regular use of quality metrics, regulatory oversight of diagnostic errors and reimbursement models that reward better diagnostic outcomes. None of this will come to pass anytime soon without lasting political and institutional attention. A January report by the World Economic Forum and Boston Consulting Group showed that, globally, women’s health receives just 6% of annual private health care investment. Companies focusing exclusively on women’s health issues get less than 1% of funding, costing women 75 million years of healthy living annually. Still, there are glimmers of hope if you look in the right places. Organizations like the American Heart Association have launched incentive programs aimed at fast-tracking new biomedical technologies for conditions disproportionately impacting women, and the Gates Foundation pledged $2.5 billion through 2030 to accelerate women’s health research and development.
