Medical Errors top cause of death and injury according to study
A study authored by professors at Harvard for the Institute of Medicine entitled “To Err Is Human” concluded that medical errors account for more deaths in the U.S. than motor-vehicle accidents. The study was based on medical mistakes made over several years. The study called for improvements in the medical profession and found a number of reasons why. The results imply that at least 44,000 and as many as 98,000 Americans die in the hospital each year as the result of medical errors which exceed the number of deaths or injury in vehicle accidents, breast cancer or AIDS. The likely causes of death or injury are a result of medication errors with wrong dosage or wrong medication, wrong-site surgery and compounding multi-system failures. The Journal of American Medical Association concurs with the findings saying in a follow up article that “despite ongoing claims of improvement, the statistic still remain grim and patients entering a hospital are all at risk for being injured, or worse, due to medical error.”
