Patient safety experts from Johns Hopkins University estimate that more than 250,000 Americans die each year because of medical mistakes. That makes health care errors the third leading cause of death in the United States, right after heart attacks and cancer.
Estimating Cause of Death:
The two Johns Hopkins researchers point out that getting an accurate assessment of deaths due to medical mishaps is challenging. That is in large measure because there is no system for collecting these data.
CDC Does Not Count Medical Misadventure as a Cause of Death:
The CDC, which is responsible for gathering mortality statistics, does not count errors as a cause of death partly because death certificates do not have a clear code for diagnostic errors and medical mistakes.
The authors point out that their analysis does not include deaths outside the hospital, since those statistics are even more elusive. Deaths in outpatient surgical centers, nursing homes and patients who die at home from medical mistakes are rarely detected. Unless these deaths are recognized and analyzed physicians will have no way to come up with solutions for this epidemic of health care harms.
Don’t Be a Statistic:
The problem of medical errors contributing to mortality is one we have been interested in for quite some time. That is why we wrote about it in our book, Top Screwups Doctors Make and How to Avoid Them. You can read a much more in-depth discussion of the statistics in this field as well as our top recommendations on how to protect yourself in our Special Health Alert.
