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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story, originally released in 2013, at Pro Publica:

It seems that every time researchers estimate how often a medical mistake contributes to a hospital patient's death, the numbers come out worse.

[...] In 2010, the Office of Inspector General for Health and Human Services said that bad hospital care contributed to the deaths of 180,000 patients in Medicare alone in a given year.

Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher — between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death, the study says.

That would make medical errors the third-leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease, which is the first, and cancer, which is second.

The new estimates were developed by John T. James, a toxicologist at NASA's space center in Houston who runs an advocacy organization called Patient Safety America. James has also written a book about the death of his 19-year-old son after what James maintains was negligent hospital care.

Asked about the higher estimates, a spokesman for the American Hospital Association said the group has more confidence in the IOM's estimate of 98,000 deaths. ProPublica asked three prominent patient safety researchers to review James' study, however, and all said his methods and findings were credible.

[...] Dr. David Mayer, the vice president of quality and safety at Maryland-based MedStar Health, said people can make arguments about how many patient deaths are hastened by poor hospital care, but that's not really the point. All the estimates, even on the low end, expose a crisis, he said.

"Way too many people are being harmed by unintentional medical error," Mayer said, "and it needs to be corrected."

The story describes additional studies that were performed and then solicited feedback from other doctors who supported the view that the 98,000 figure underreports the problem and that the situation warrants further investigation, reporting, and action.

Have any Soylentils personally experienced or observed medical mistakes that had an adverse outcome? Alternatively, has anyone experienced a medical triumph in the face of very poor odds for a positive outcome? What about medical treatments in countries besides the US?

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