As you may know, we often report on accidents, whether they involve cars, motorcycles, bicycles, or even dogs. As we all know, traffic collisions are responsible for a great deal of deaths across the country. But according to a series of researchers, medical errors are beginning to catch up and are now responsible for more deaths than accidents.
According to researchers, “medical errors” have become a common thing in hospitals and other health-care facilities, making the practice the third-leading cause of death and claiming at least 251,000 lives yearly.
While medical error is a problem across the board, instances of fatal cases include everything from careless doctors to other issues concerning communication procedures between departments and so on. As a result, many people end up dying due to the treatment or care they are being subject to as opposed to dying from the disease.
As this problem receives a lot of attention from the media, the public is still not aware of these incidents. Unfortunately, the cases of deadly medical error have been increasing considerably in the last few years. In modern times, the issue started to be under scrutiny in 1999 when a report called preventable medical errors an “epidemic.” Then, deaths traced back to medical errors were at 98,000 a year. At 251,000 a year, we are seeing about 700 deaths a day, or about 9.5 percent of all deaths registered across the country.
Unfortunately, this problem is delicate, and many health-care facilities don’t discuss it at length.
Despite the many protocols they have in place to avoid errors, mistakes still occur, causing patients great harm. Unfortunately, hospitals and medical facilities aren’t required to report specific information regarding medical mistakes. As a result, agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren’t able to come up with statistics that show whether the incidents are happening more often in certain states or certain types of facilities.
As personal injury attorneys, this concerns us as this problem may put the lives of countless patients in danger regularly. We urge the CDC to change its rules so that hospitals and medical facilities report on errors that lead to injuries, infections, and deaths so that we’re truly aware of how widespread this issue truly is.
For more on this research and how the study has been conducted, follow this link.
