Every year a quarter-million of us are killed by medical error.
That makes medical errors the third leading cause of death in the US.
Medical errors kill more of us than motor vehicle accidents, firearms, AND opioid overdoses – added together.
Efforts to fix this problem are woefully under-funded, poorly co-ordinated, and often ignored by stakeholders. That’s likely due to poor reporting and tabulation of medical errors and the repercussions thereof.
It is stunning indeed that a $3.4 billion industry whose sole focus is to preserve and protect our health kills a quarter million people a year – and we didn’t know this until a few weeks ago.
What’s even more disturbing is this story has been all but ignored by mainstream media.
What does this mean for you?
Ask questions, demand answers, be forceful, and don’t accept platitudes. And hold doctors, hospitals, and caregivers accountable.
Jay Janssen, a well know plaintiff attorney out of Peoria, IL knows that. It was included in his full page ad in the 12/15/19 Bloomington, Il newspaper.
This statistic has been around for many years. No other industry could survive anything like this. Yet health care just trudges on. Go to any risk management/safety conference and these numbers are bandied about to the chagrin of everyone. Can you imagine if the airline transport industry ran on these statistics! The uproar would be deafening and people would be testify in Congress. The health industry does it and not a peep, you have to ask yourself why. no one cares?
Alarming. please provide a link to the source of this information
Hello Stephen, and thanks for the query.
The highlighted text has the link – it is also here. https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139.full
best Joe