Medical errors now third leading cause of death in U.S.

I watched the resident at one of the best hospitals in the country order Tylenol for my ex-husband. “Why are you giving him Tylenol?” I asked. For his fever, he explained.

“No, I meant, why are you ordering Tylenol for someone who is obviously in liver failure?” I said. “Have you looked at him? He’s bright yellow.”

“Oh, are we in the medical profession?” he said in a condescending tone.

“No, we’re in the legal profession,” I told him.

So yeah, I have no trouble believing their numbers:

Nightmare stories of nurses giving potent drugs meant for one patient to another and surgeons removing the wrong body parts have dominated recent headlines about medical care. Lest you assume those cases are the exceptions, a new study by patient safety researchers provides some context.

Their analysis, published in the BMJ on Tuesday, shows that “medical errors” in hospitals and other health care facilities are incredibly common and may now be the third leading cause of death in the United States — claiming 251,000 lives every year, more than respiratory disease, accidents, stroke and Alzheimer’s.

Martin Makary, a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who led the research, said in an interview that the category includes everything from bad doctors to more systemic issues such as communication breakdowns when patients are handed off from one department to another.

“It boils down to people dying from the care that they receive rather than the disease for which they are seeing care,” Makary said.