Most people wouldn’t have any difficulty recognizing heart disease and cancer as the top causes of death in the United States. However, most folks are shocked to learn that the No. 3 cause of death in America is medical mistakes.
In a famous paper published by the Institute of Medicine in 1999 titled “To Err Is Human,” it was estimated that 98,000 people per year died due to medical errors. The concluding recommendation was that we should work more on making safer systems and less on individual blame.
According to a 2016 Johns Hopkins University study, approximately 250,000 people die per year due to errors committed by our health care system. The metaphor often used is that of two fully loaded 747 jets crashing with no survivors every day of the year….