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Every year, 12 million American adults are misdiagnosed, while an estimated 795,000 die or are permanently disabled by doctor errors. And, according to June 2025 data, women and racial minorities suffer misdiagnosis rates 20 to 30% higher than white men.
This study will consider the reasons why white men are diagnosed differently to women and racial minorities, which conditions are most often misdiagnosed, some of the associated side effects of incorrect medication prescriptions, and the financial cost of so many medical mistakes.
Let’s first consider the question: why are women so often misdiagnosed compared to men?
The Price Women Pay For a Male-Centric Health System
Despite making up half of the U.S. population, women are greatly underrepresented in medical tests and studies. Until relatively recently, clinical research defaulted to male subjects, treating the male body as the universal standard and excluding women over concerns about hormonal variability and cost.
Congress didn’t mandate the inclusion of women and minorities in NIH-funded trials until 1993, and women still pay the price: far more adverse drug reactions, chronic undertreatment, and a healthcare system making decisions about female health based on male-centric data.
But what are the real-world consequences of this gender disparity? The following misdiagnosed conditions provide the perfect illustration.
The Top 10 Misdiagnosed Conditions in Women
When it comes to medical diagnosis, the data tells us that women pay a price men don’t. Women are 50% more likely than men to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack and 33% more likely to be misdiagnosed during a stroke, with often fatal consequences. And such mistakes are common in a medical diagnostic system built around male bodies and male symptom presentations, with women’s experiences chronically undertested, undertreated, and too often dismissed.
The pattern extends beyond the emergency room. Women wait an average of 2.5 years longer than men for a cancer diagnosis, a time during which, depending on the cancer type, can be the difference between life and death.
Women living with endometriosis face an average of 7 to 10 years before they receive a correct diagnosis. PCOS, which affects 1 in 8 women, remains the second most misdiagnosed gynecological condition in the country.
And autoimmune diseases (of sufferers, four in five are women) take an average of five doctors and nearly four years to correctly diagnose. In each of these cases, the often dangerous delays are longstanding norms.
The misdiagnosis gap doesn’t stop at physical conditions. Depression is misdiagnosed in 30 to 50% of female patients. Women are frequently overtreated with psychiatric medication for physical conditions that were never properly investigated.
ADHD and autism symptoms, which appeared in 6% of misdiagnosis cases in a 2025 survey of 500 women, are routinely attributed to anxiety, leaving women without adequate support.
Thyroid disorders are regularly dismissed as stress or the natural consequences of aging. Women’s lung cancer symptoms, part of a condition with a 22.5% overall misdiagnosis rate, are regularly written off as anxiety or respiratory illness, long before cancer is considered.
Taken together, these aren’t anomalous cases and are part of a systemic, documented failure to take women’s symptoms seriously across virtually every category of disease: cardiovascular, gynecological, neurological, oncological, and psychiatric.
The consequences are clear: delayed diagnoses, missed treatment windows, unnecessary suffering, and lives cut short. Until diagnostic standards, medical education, and clinical research treat women’s health as a priority, the diagnosis gap will endure.
Correcting Misdiagnosis
At least 1 in 20 U.S. adults experiences a diagnostic error every year. When a diagnostic error occurs, correction is rarely swift. The average time to correct a diagnostic error is around 3 years after an initial misdiagnosis. That’s three years during which patients often receive treatment and prescriptions for conditions they don’t have, while the actual condition continues to cause untreated damage.
Diagnostic errors are responsible for 7 to 17% of adverse events directly linked to patient harm, with consequences compounded over time. In some studies, up to 50% of patients with serious illnesses are initially misdiagnosed, delaying treatment and affecting prognosis.
For women 20–30% more likely to be misdiagnosed than white men, and the 3-year period is compounded. Even worse: not all women are treated equally, as the following data illustrates.
Racial Biases and Disparities in Misdiagnosis
A key reason for disparities across different female racial groups is the fact that racial bias is rooted in medical training. Research has found that nearly half of first- and second-year medical students falsely believe that Black patients experience less pain than white patients. This myth has no biological basis and yet clearly and directly influences the assessment and treatment of symptoms.
Black women bear the brunt of this disparity across almost every disease category. In 2023, Black women died from pregnancy-related causes at a rate of 50.3 per 100,000 live births, more than three times the rate for white women (14.5) and more than four times the rates for Hispanic (12.4) and Asian women (10.7).
Although Black women make up just 14% of the U.S. female population, they account for approximately 40% of all maternal deaths. This disparity persists even after we factor in education and income, and suggests systemic drivers entirely independent of socioeconomic status.
Black women are also more likely to be diagnosed with cancer at later stages and carry higher age-adjusted cancer fatality rates than other women in most states.
This is despite the fact that their overall cancer rates are broadly comparable to those suffered by white women. According to the 2023 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality data, Black patients received worse care than white patients on 52% of quality measures, with marked disparities in heart disease, cancer, stroke, maternal health, and pain management.
For Hispanic women, the outlook is more layered. (Note: Hispanic women are subject to what researchers term the ‘Hispanic paradox’: a comparatively longer average life expectancy, despite significantly higher rates of uninsurance and lower rates of access to preventive care.)
In 2023, the five leading causes of death among Hispanic and Latino women were cancer, heart disease, unintentional injuries, stroke, and diabetes, all conditions for which delayed or missed diagnoses exacerbate outcomes.
Hispanic adults generally suffer higher rates of diabetes than white adults, and face elevated premature mortality in several states where access to specialist care is especially limited. And this gap widens whenever the conditions most likely to be missed are the ones that require the most consistent follow-up.
Asian women face a different but equally troubling diagnostic blind spot, one rooted not in clinical bias but in research. Less than 1% of NIH funding is directed toward Asian health research, with most clinical decisions about Asian patients based on data derived from non-Hispanic white cohorts.
This means conditions that present differently across Asian subgroups (including gastric cancer, which is significantly more prevalent among Korean Americans, and liver cancer rates that are disproportionately high among Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean populations) are consistently evaluated against inappropriate diagnostic standards. The result is a community that may seem to perform better on aggregate health metrics, but which quietly carries undetected disease burdens.
There’s a consistent factor across all four female groups: the further a woman’s identity diverges from the white male template that still shapes modern medicinal diagnostic frameworks, the higher the probability that her problems will go unrecognized, undertreated, or falsely labelled.
And even before a diagnosis can be delivered, minority groups must often endure a disproportionate hospital wait.
Average Hospital Wait Time Disparities
A retrospective study of over 310,000 emergency department patients found median wait times of 9 minutes for white patients, 13 minutes for Black patients, and 19 minutes for Hispanic patients (more than double the waiting time for white patients).
A national analysis of emergency department data from 2013 to 2017 found that Black and Hispanic patients consistently experienced longer average waiting times than white patients, even after data was adjusted for patient, hospital, and health system variables.
Black patients have a 10% lower likelihood of hospital admission following an emergency department visit. They’re also 1.26 times more likely to die in the ED or hospital than white patients.
The disparities also extend to the length of a hospital stay. Black patients spend much longer (by almost a day) in the hospital than white patients, even after we factor in comorbidities, demographics, and clinical factors.
Gender differentials further compound these gaps. Female patients consistently endure longer emergency department visits than male patients across all racial groups and hospital settings.
For women of color navigating a system in which they are already 20 to 30% more likely to be misdiagnosed, such waiting time disparities represent a further emphasis of a multi-tier system. And beyond waiting times and diagnosis, there may then be further problems to negotiate regarding medical prescriptions.
Wrong Diagnosis, Wrong Medication
A misdiagnosis will often mean a prescription of inappropriate (and potentially harmful) drugs. More than 2 million adverse event and medication error reports are submitted to the FDA’s MedWatch program every year, and up to 91% of medication errors are due to the wrong prescription.
Across the ten conditions most commonly misdiagnosed in women, cardiac, neurological, hormonal, oncological, or autoimmune symptoms are often incorrectly interpreted as psychiatric, gastrointestinal, or stress-related. That often means lengthy periods spent taking the wrong medication while the actual problem remains unmedicated.
Heart disease is misdiagnosed in women up to 50% more often than in men. Cardiac events are routinely mistaken for anxiety or panic disorder and treated with SSRIs and benzodiazepines: these drugs interact dangerously with cardiac medications and suppress the very symptoms that might otherwise encourage further investigation.
Stroke (which women are 33% more likely to have misdiagnosed) is regularly attributed to vertigo or migraines, meaning women often end up taking unnecessary medications while neurological damage goes untreated.
Lung cancer (which has a 22.5% overall misdiagnosis rate for women) is often mistaken for asthma, COPD, or anxiety, leading to prescriptions for inhalers, antibiotics, and antidepressants while potentially fatal tumors flourish.
Cancer is frequently misread as IBS, acid reflux, or depression, with antacids, antispasmodics, and SSRIs often misprescribed while women wait an average of 2.5 years longer than men for the right diagnosis.
Hormonal and reproductive conditions are subject to the same issues over even longer timelines. Women with endometriosis wait 7 to 10 years for a correct diagnosis, a prolonged time during which opioids, oral contraceptives, antidepressants, and antispasmodics manage pain without treating the disease, with the added risk of dependency.
PCOS, the second most misdiagnosed gynecological condition, is often mistaken for irregular periods, depression, or obesity. Subsequently, oral contraceptives, antidepressants, and Metformin are prescribed to remedy the effects of a disorder that has never been correctly named.
Thyroid disorders are often dismissed as depression or aging, and are then treated with SSRIs and HRT that mask symptoms without addressing the underlying dysfunction.
Autoimmune diseases take an average of 4 years across 5 doctors to diagnose. Serious issues such as lupus, MS, and rheumatoid arthritis are regularly misclassified as depression, fibromyalgia, or hypochondria, and treated with antidepressants and NSAIDs that mask inflammation while the disease progresses.
Mental health misdiagnoses compound harm. Women with depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, or autism are frequently misdiagnosed with schizophrenia, personality disorders, or generalized anxiety, resulting in erroneous antipsychotic prescriptions.
Approximately 75% of patients prescribed antipsychotics experience significant side effects, with women facing disproportionate risk. Antipsychotics are associated with higher rates of cardiac arrhythmia in women than in men, plus hormonal disruption and significant weight gain
Women with ADHD or autism are routinely misdiagnosed with anxiety or borderline personality disorder and prescribed SSRIs and benzodiazepines for conditions that those drugs cannot treat. Meanwhile, their actual neurodevelopmental disorder goes unaddressed for decades.
The cumulative cost of preventable medication errors to the U.S. healthcare system runs to more than $21 billion each year.
The data reveals a structural failure with a predictable shape. Because female symptoms are often attributed to textbook male medical manifestations, it increases the likelihood they’ll receive the wrong prescription for the wrong condition, while underlying problems worsen.
As mentioned, side effects are often a significant issue. Let’s consider the most prominent examples.
Disproportionate Female Adverse Reactions to Drug
The risks women face from prescription medication are compounded by the fact that women are 50 to 75% more likely to experience adverse drug reactions than men. Among 668 drugs across the 20 most common treatment regimens in the United States, 46% report significant sex differences in adverse reactions. Despite this, most are still prescribed to women and men at identical levels.
Research published in PMC found that women between the ages of 19 and 69 were 43 to 69% more likely to suffer an adverse drug reaction. Additionally, adverse reactions peak earlier for women (in their 30s) than for men (in their 50s).
Broadly, the most commonly reported female reactions from misdiagnosis-driven prescriptions include: gastrointestinal distress, dizziness, tremor, and cognitive impairment, cardiovascular complications including dangerous heart rhythm changes, hormonal disruption, dependency and withdrawal syndromes, and (in severe cases) permanent injury.
A prospective multicenter study of over 2,300 hospitalized patients found that at least one adverse drug reaction was recorded in nearly a third of all patients, with women disproportionately affected across cardiovascular, neurological, gastrointestinal, and musculoskeletal drug classes.
Critically, approximately 19% of adverse drug reactions go entirely undiagnosed and are then treated as new diseases.
And for women, it’s more than just the physical and mental cost of misdiagnosis and the misprescription of drugs: there’s also a hefty financial burden.
The Financial Cost of Medical Misdiagnosis
The financial cost of misdiagnosis falls hardest on women, with staggering numbers applicable at every stage of the diagnostic failure. A single MRI can cost up to $3,500, while a single overnight hospital stay costs an average of $2,607.
Such costs repeat with every incorrect admission, every unnecessary procedure, and every specialist referral triggered by a wrong diagnosis.
The Institute of Medicine estimates that 30% of all annual U.S. healthcare spending (approximately $750 billion) is wasted on unnecessary services and inefficiencies, a figure in no small part due to misdiagnosis-driven overtreatment.
For women specifically, the financial burden is compounded by the nature of their misdiagnoses. Conditions like endometriosis, PCOS, and autoimmune diseases that take years to diagnose correctly generate years of appointments, repeat testing, and incorrect prescriptions.
More than 35% of women have recently chosen not to fill a prescription because of cost (compared to just 27% of men), and when a prescription is issued for the wrong condition, the patient isn’t even paying for appropriate help.
Race disparities add another layer of expense. A NIH-funded study published in JAMA found that racial and ethnic health disparities cost the U.S. economy $451 billion in 2018 alone, a 41% increase from the previous estimate (2014) of $320 billion. Additionally, 69% of that economic burden was borne by Black Americans due to premature mortality levels.
The average American family spends around 11% of their household income on healthcare premiums and out-of-pocket costs. Yet that figure approaches 20% for African American households, meaning Black women absorb a disproportionate share of the financial fallout from a system disproportionately likely to misdiagnose their health issues.
Black and Hispanic people are more likely to delay care because of costs, more likely to incur medical debt, and less likely to have a dependable source of care or receive timely preventive services. This creates a compounding cycle in which financial barriers delay diagnosis, delayed diagnosis worsens disease, and worsened disease generates higher costs that further strain overstretched household budgets.
Diagnosis: Women And Minority Racial Groups Disproportionately Suffer
Every year, around 795,000 Americans die or are left permanently disabled because a doctor made the wrong diagnosis. Women, particularly women of color, bear a disproportionate share of that burden.
Women are 50% more likely than men to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack and 33% more likely to be misdiagnosed during a stroke. Sadly, these are predictable consequences of a medical system built for men. Although Congress mandated a more female-centric system in 1993, women remain 20 to 30% more likely to be misdiagnosed than white men.
Research has found that nearly half of first– and second–year medical students falsely believe that Black patients experience less pain than white patients. This myth has no biological basis, and yet clearly and directly influences the assessment and treatment of symptoms
That gap plays out across virtually every disease category: women wait an average of 2.5 years longer than men for a cancer diagnosis, spend 7 to 10 years cycling through appointments before receiving a correct endometriosis diagnosis, and face an average of five doctors and nearly four years before an autoimmune disease is correctly identified.
And the wrong prescription compounds the harm: cardiac events are treated with SSRIs and benzodiazepines, stroke victims are sent home with antivertigo medication, and cancers progress while antacids and antispasmodics are redundant.
Women are also 50 to 75% more likely than men to experience adverse drug reactions, meaning women absorb not just the clinical cost of misdiagnosis but the biological cost of a pharmacological system built for men.
Racial factors aggravate the problem. Black women die from pregnancy-related causes at more than three times the rate of white women, receive worse care than white patients on 52% of quality measures, and face median emergency department wait times of 13 minutes compared to 9 minutes for white patients. Hispanic patients fare even worse, waiting 19 minutes.
Add to this the fact that a single diagnostic error can generate thousands of dollars in costs through repeat imaging, unnecessary procedures, and incorrect prescriptions, while racial and ethnic health disparities cost the U.S. economy $451 billion in 2018 alone, with 69% of that burden borne by Black Americans. African American households also spend nearly twice the national average proportion of their income on healthcare.
Overall, women bear a disproportionate amount of the financial cost of medical misdiagnosis, with racial factors adding additional layers of disparity.
Until the healthcare system is engineered to provide nuanced parity to both men and women of all racial groups, disparities will continue to prevail.
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