The other Awards Obama will will this year...

[kandrathe]

Now, the question then becomes - are there net lives saved from avoiding unnecessary treatment, or are they outnumbered by the lives lost in delayed treatment?

Right.

I know of some personal anecdotes in my family where delay "has / would have" resulted in death. Not scientific. I still believe in that old adage, "get a second opinion". However, in this cost conscious world, who can afford to get one, let alone two specialists to diagnose a problem. I would surmise that the type of malady would dictate the parameters for speed of treatment. One family member wasn't feeling well, so he went to his GP, who started to run tests. He was on the treadmill and started having a heart attack, and the GP gave him nitroglycerin, and called the ambulance to take him to the hospital where they performed a quintuple bypass within a 8 hours. And, it is an interesting counter point to the article you linked. That couple did end up paying some money out of pocket for the treatment, but that was 25 years ago. That family member worked with his GP over the next few years, and with some modern drugs totally turned around his health and is now well into his late seventies with no recurrence of that health issue. After retirement, he volunteers to drive a school bus for the local school district. I would attribute his recovery and longevity to a medical system that reacted quickly to his problem, and then worked to resolve it.

I know many other tales just in my family where speedy diagnoses of acute issues and prompt action saved their life.

I'm sure there are those times when due to a bad diagnosis or due to the lack of urgency that some delay would correct an issue, or allow the patient time to be better prepared for the treatment.

I did a quick google (scholar) for "treatment+delay+mortality" and found quite a few studies where mortality and morbidity was directly linked to delays before treatment, which also includes diagnostic delay. I'm sure you are talking about the delay after diagnosis, however in misdiagnosis the delay may also be fatal.