ECRI Releases List of Most Significant Threats to Patient Safety in 2025

ECRI has released their list of the most significant threats to patient safety in 2025, and “dismissing patient, family, and caregiver concerns” is at the top.

The organization specifically says that “time and resource constraints make it increasingly difficult for some clinicians to provide empathetic care that addresses patient and caregiver concerns, potentially leading to missed and delayed diagnoses.” More than 94% of patients have reported instances when their symptoms were “ignored or dismissed by a doctor,” according to a HealthCentral survey.

ECRI writes that patients and caregivers feel like they’re experiencing “medical gaslighting” when their concerns go unaddressed. This is defined as “an act that invalidates a patient’s genuine clinical concern without proper medical evaluation.” This can occur when “clinicians are rushed for time, have biases that reflexively attribute symptoms to issues like mental illness, age, or weight, or make cognitive errors like interpreting new information in a way that confirms a previous diagnosis. This can lead to a missed diagnosis, delayed treatment, and decreased trust between patients and their healthcare providers.”

Rounding out the top three on the ECRI list of patient safety threats are “insufficient governance of artificial intelligence” and “spread of medical misinformation.” The report includes “recommendations for healthcare organizations to create organizational resilience to navigate the identified threats and strive for total systems safety.”