t’s one of the most common misdiagnoses in American medicine, and it usually happens like this: An old and frail person gets confused, tired, or a little dizzy. Maybe she just doesn’t feel like eating. Or she stumbles.

These are classic geriatric syndromes that usually receive a classic medical response: the senior is ordered to pee in a cup for testing. The leading suspect is a urinary tract infection.

Too often, it’s the wrong suspect.

The urinary tract infection (UTI), has become the medical bogeyman that will not go away, a default but often incorrect diagnosis that seems to come up every time an older person has some ill-defined health presentation but still lacks the most reliable symptom of painful urination. As a career geriatrician, I don’t enjoy calling out colleagues, but health professionals need to spend less time ordering people to pee in a cup and more time figuring out the true causes of the problem.