Researchers from Johns Hopkins analyzed medical death rate data over an eight year period. They have calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical error in the U.S. Their analysis was published May 3, 2016 in The BMJ.
The report, authored in part by researcher, Martin Makary, M.D., professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an authority on health reform, states, “The science of safety has matured to describe how communication breakdowns, diagnostic errors, poor judgment, and inadequate skill can directly result in patient harm and death. We analyzed the scientific literature on medical error to identify its contribution to US deaths in relation to causes listed by the CDC.”
That figure comes to about 685 deaths a day in the U.S. due to medical errors. That is pretty scary stuff. For comparison, there are about 90 deaths a day in the U.S. due to motor vehicle crashes, according to the statistics from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
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