Medical error third leading cause of death in US

Merry

Well-Known Member
Ariana Eunjung Cha reports today in the Washington Post on a newly-published paper by patient safety researchers in the BMJ that concludes that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US after cancer and heart disease.

Nightmare stories of nurses giving potent drugs meant for one patient to another and surgeons removing the wrong body parts have dominated recent headlines about medical care. Lest you assume those cases are the exceptions, a new study by patient safety researchers provides some context.

Their analysis, published in the BMJ on Tuesday, shows that "medical errors" in hospitals and other health care facilities are incredibly common and may now be the third leading cause of death in the United States -- claiming 251,000 lives every year, more than respiratory disease, accidents, stroke and Alzheimer's.

Martin Makary, a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who led the research, said in an interview that the category includes everything from bad doctors to more systemic issues such as communication breakdowns when patients are handed off from one department to another.

And severe injury caused by medical error, the article goes on, quoting a doctor who works for a health care consultancy firm, may be 40 times as high as the death rate.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...hird-leading-cause-of-death-in-united-states/
 
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