Deaths from avoidable medical error more than double in past decade, investigation shows: Scientific American Blog

Deaths from avoidable medical error more than double in past decade, investigation shows: Scientific American Blog

Preventable medical mistakes and infections are responsible for about 200,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to an investigation by the Hearst media corporation. The report comes 10 years after the Institute of Medicine's "To Err Is Human" analysis, which found that 44,000 to 98,000 people were dying annually due to these errors and called for the medical community and government to cut that number in half by 2004.
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In fact, according to Phil Bronstein, who led the investigation, "The annual medical error death toll is higher than that for fatal car crashes," he said in a prepared statement.