The Truth About Medical Errors

"It's one of the Internet's favorite perennial false claims, and it's so persistent that it remains today a current political talking point. It concerns medical errors, which are things like patients being given drugs they're allergic to; bedsores resulting in infection; healthcare-acquired infections; failure to spot things like sepsis; and misdiagnoses or wrong treatments or failure to follow treatment plans. The claim that medical errors like these are the third leading cause of death in the United States is one that you can find plastered just about anywhere you look for it, even though it was never true, and not even close to true. Volumes of papers have been published showing it to be false — and not just false, but false by more than an order of magnitude. Today we're going to find out where this urban legend came from, reveal how we know it's not true, and see why the heck so many people continue to repeat it."

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Are Deaths From Medical Errors Really As Common As Recently Reported?

David Gorski looks into the research from which recent news reports were based, for example “Medical Errors Are No. 3 Cause Of U.S Deaths, Researchers Say

The counterpoint

Medical Error—The Third Leading Cause Of Death In The US

"Human error is inevitable. Although we cannot eliminate human error, we can better measure the problem to design safer systems mitigating its frequency, visibility, and consequences. Strategies to reduce death from medical care should include three steps: making errors more visible when they occur so their effects can be intercepted; having remedies at hand to rescue patients 17; and making errors less frequent by following principles that take human limitations into account (fig 2⇓). This multitier approach necessitates guidance from reliable data."

The problem of medical error should not be exempt from scientific assessment.