Errors in medical care cause more U.S. deaths than anything short of heart disease and cancer. And they’ve almost certainly been killing Americans at a high rate for some time. Because of shortcomings in how those deaths are reported, however, they’ve never been listed among the top causes of death, and thus are not seen as a serious threat to mortality.

That should change. Medical errors are highly preventable, and improving how they are recorded and investigated would lower their frequency and save lives – a lot of lives, actually.

A recently released study estimates that medical errors kill over 250,000 Americans a year, more than chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, suicide and motor vehicle accidents. Photographee.eu/Shutterstock.com

A study from a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, published this week in the journal BMJ, estimates that medical errors kill over 250,000 Americans a year, more than chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, suicide and motor vehicle accidents. That’s 9.5 percent of all deaths – nearly 700 a day.

The numbers may sound high, but they’re backed by prior research. A 2004 Medicare report estimated the 2000-02 medical error death toll at 575,000 people, an average of over 190,000 a year. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that 180,000 Medicare beneficiaries alone died from medical error in 2008.

And in 1999, an Institute of Medicine report estimated annual deaths resulting from medical error at 98,000, which many researchers said at the time was likely a significant underestimate.

The 1999 report caused a stir, but no real action, among medical professionals and policymakers. Sixteen years later, not much has improved.

Secrecy is a big part of the reason why. When doctors diagnose the wrong problem or prescribe the wrong treatment – or when a care provider makes any of the million human mistakes that can result in death in a clinical setting – health care facilities are not eager to talk about it.

Their silence is protected, too, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which doesn’t require the reporting of medical errors on death certificates. As a result, medical errors are not listed among other significant causes of death, and are kept off the annual lists that let people know, for example, just how big a problem respiratory disease is, and what kind of response it warrants.

That’s a shame. Deaths caused by “communication breakdowns, diagnostic errors, poor judgment, and inadequate skill,” as the BMJ study describes medical error, could benefit from more sunlight.

Improved data collection and dissemination – along with more thorough, independent investigations of errors – would allow all hospitals and health care providers to learn from the mistakes of others, leading to the creation of better systems and protocols.

Human error can never be entirely removed from medicine, but it can be recognized and mitigated. A patient’s main concern should be the severity of his or her illness, not the adequacy of the treatment.

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