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A study published in the BMJ found that medical errors may be the third leading cause of death in the United States:
The IOM, based on one study, estimated deaths because of medical errors as high as 98,000 a year. Makary's research involves a more comprehensive analysis of four large studies, including ones by the Health and Human Services Department's Office of the Inspector General and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that took place between 2000 to 2008. His calculation of 251,000 deaths equates to nearly 700 deaths a day — about 9.5 percent of all deaths annually in the United States.
And from the airplane analogy, a simple fix: checklists.
Is it time for a system theory approach to medicine?
Medical error—the third leading cause of death in the US (DOI: 10.1136/bmj.i2139)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Saturday May 14 2016, @10:30AM
I've seen such figures before, but you have to take them with a grain of salt. Many of these are people who were critically ill; they are undergoing complex, risky medical treatment, because they would die without it. If that treatment goes less-than-perfectly, did they die of the treatment or the disease?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @10:34AM
Malpractice defense attorney spotted.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @10:40AM
Not really.
Literally thousands of medical errors happen daily but only a few are life threatening.
This is a tally of those few life threatening ones where the outcome was death. While being critically ill compounds things, these were severe enough where death was a good possibility regardless.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dak664 on Saturday May 14 2016, @11:11AM
How would you account for longer survival under hospice care, compared to undergoing active treatment?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17349493 [nih.gov]