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No, medical errors do not cause 251,000 deaths per year in the US. That number was derived from a faulty report (not even a study) that extrapolated from a tiny number of deaths.
"The supposed fact that medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States has become a meme, spreading virally through society from the scientific literature to the evening news. As they're repeated within the scholarly community and popular media, estimates in the range of 200,000-400,000 deaths per year look like settled science.
But the methodology applied to arrive at these estimates published in multiple scientific journals falls short of the rigor needed for such an important topic. We are concerned that these estimates are inaccurate, implausible, and encourage unwarranted distrust in the healthcare system."
"Ever since the publication of the infamous 2016 BMJ opinion piece claiming medical error should be considered the third leading cause of death in the U.S., the debate on the true incidence of deaths caused by medical error has been raging. Many, including me, felt the estimate of 251,000 deaths per year from medical error was grossly inflated. For example, the paper extrapolated the number of deaths from three outdated studies with a total of just 35 deaths, and medical error was not well-defined."
"Shojania and co-author Mary Dixon-Woods were concerned enough to publish an opinion piece shortly after the BMJ article was published, outlining the problems with the 250,000 figure. They pointed out that the four studies selected by the authors were not designed to measure deaths from medical error and did not accurately determine which deaths occurred because of medical error. The number of deaths that were included in three of the four studies were small (with only 14, 12, and nine deaths), and were extrapolated by the authors of the BMJ paper to much larger populations, leaving room for considerable error. In addition, the extrapolations were sometimes done incorrectly: The patient populations used to measure the rates of medical error and death excluded those admitted for childbirth or mental health, and yet, those rates were extrapolated to every hospitalization in the U.S. (of which childbirth is the most common)."
Your first link is an opinion piece by two medical doctors
Your second link gives two short paragraphs of opinion, then under that it says "advertisement"
Your third link comes under the heading "Healthy Debate" That means: As a last resort they can always claim that it's debatable.
The link I posted presented a study under the heading "NIH...National Library of Medicine...PubMed.gov"
And the article states that, "..... less than 10 percent of medical errors are reported."
You have blindly accepted a report from 2016 that has been disputed. The purpose of the 2016 report was to improve reporting. It did not definitively research all causes of death and relied on inadequate underlying studies. They merely extrapolated some data to strengthen their goal of changing medical reporting.
"An alarming statistic shared by countless people is based on a highly problematic bit of data extrapolation and has been used to paint all of medicine as untrustworthy"
"The idea that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. is indeed a fiction, an overestimation that has negative consequences.
This whole story has its prelude in a 2000 report called To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System by the Institute of Medicine. The report took two studies, one done in Colorado and Utah and the other in New York, and extrapolated their results to all hospital admissions in the United States, concluding that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans must be dying each year as a result of medical errors. The lower estimate exceeded the eighth leading cause of death and trumped fatalities from motor vehicle accidents.
In 2016, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published an “analysis” by a research fellow, Michael Daniel, and a professor who had developed the operating room checklist, Martin A. Makary, both from the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University. To call it a study would be inaccurate. It was a call for better reporting of medical errors, motivated by a lack of funding available to support quality and safety research and propped up by a back-of-the-envelope calculation. The authors looked at the few studies that had been published on the problem since the Institute of Medicine report. They took the mean death rate from medical error from those studies and extrapolated them to the total number of U.S. hospital admissions in 2013. After adding that this extrapolation was surely an underestimation of the actual problem, they concluded that this would mean medical error would rank third in the Centers for Disease Control’s list of causes of death in the U.S. This became the title of their published analysis, which has been cited in at least 1,265 papers according to Scopus, and this memorable idea spread to news articles, television shows, and alternative medicine circles.
Take-home message:
-A popular claim that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States originated in a 2016 back-of-the-envelope analysis published in the British Medical Journal
-This ranking is an exaggeration that was arrived at by combining a small number of studies done in populations that were not meant to be representative of the entire U.S. population and that were not designed to prove a link between a medical error and death
-The claim is often used by proponents of alternative medicine to scare people away from medical care.
Analyzing medical death rate data over an eight-year period, Johns Hopkins patient safety experts
have calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical error in the U.S.
This is in addition to the first link in my opening post to NIH....National Library of Medicine...PubMed.gov
Analyzing medical death rate data over an eight-year period, Johns Hopkins patient safety experts
have calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical error in the U.S.
This is in addition to the first link in my opening post to NIH....National Library of Medicine...PubMed.gov
You remain pointless as most people aren't getting the point that you are trying to make. Arguing about the numbers seems like that is the most important point that you are trying to make. You also seem to concentrate on deadly errors there than simply all errors in general in order to sensationalize it.
There was a concerted effort put in place by national and state regulators such as JCAH mandates to reduce errors. The National Patient Safety Goals were initiated on a national level.
One thing noted and problematic from the very beginning is that if you punish people for making mistakes whether it is a small mistake or a large mistake is that there is no benefit for that person to report any mistake if they are going to get into trouble. That encourages hiding or ignoring mistakes.
"Part of the solution is to maintain a culture that works toward recognizing safety challenges and implementing viable solutions rather than harboring a culture of blame, shame, and punishment. Healthcare organizations need to establish a culture of safety that focuses on system improvement by viewing medical errors as challenges that must be overcome. All individuals on the healthcare team must play a role in making the provision of healthcare safer for patients and healthcare workers."
So it went from the blame game to encouraging reporting of errors in order to change the system that caused them to happen. That way people wouldn't be hiding errors.
Early on in implementing error reduction, there was a harsh system put in place that penalized people for making mistakes, and at my place of work they came up with a point system where if you made three major errors then you would get fired. The problem was is that they got to determine what constituted a major error vs a minor error. Not noticing a misspelled name or if the hospital number was an L instead of a 1 constituted a major error in labeling blood specimens. Three of those and you get fired. It didn't matter that the error didn't transfer to clinical outcomes. It didn't matter if nothing happened to the patient. So if somebody missed it then the next person would ignore it in order not to get the other person in trouble if they had already made too many added up point system errors. I had a nurse time of whom I informed from the ER about the mistake on labeling actually going all the way up into the lab and asked me to please not report it because she had already made labeling errors before and wanted to kiss me in order to throw that in as a bonus. She got crouched near me while I was working in a biohood. I said thanks but just re-label the specimen appropriately and we will forget it. She was very happy.
That changed to less of a blame game and they got rid of the point system to emphasize the process if an issue could be tied to a process. Major errors resulting in patient care impact are still addressed on a per-incident basis and can include termination of employment. I have seen that happen. They reported a negative pregnancy test instead of a positive result.
Most people out in the community don't like that emphasis on reducing blame. They want to go after anybody who makes a mistake and they should all be punished as the point system did. In reality, if you want true change and error reduction then you need to address the system and process that caused the error if any.
Most people who want to be vindictive rather than problem-solving usually have other motives for pushing another agenda.
Your first link is an opinion piece by two medical doctors
Your second link gives two short paragraphs of opinion, then under that it says "advertisement"
Your third link comes under the heading "Healthy Debate" That means: As a last resort they can always claim that it's debatable.
The link I posted presented a study under the heading "NIH...National Library of Medicine...PubMed.gov"
And the article states that, "..... less than 10 percent of medical errors are reported."
Your link is also opinion. It is not original research.
It has been criticized because the definition of "error" and the statistics used are faulty.
A family friend was "medically tortured" to death.
He was walking, talking, living his life. Then Medicare kicked in and he went for his wellbeing checkup.
After diagnosis, testing, treatments/surgery, complications, hospital stays, he was dead. Took about 4 months after his "checkup.' For his "wellbeing'.
There is literally NO DOUBT in my mind that his death was directly caused by the interventions he received. He died after they put him in a medically induced coma from all the complications caused by the treatments and surgery.
A family friend was "medically tortured" to death.
He was walking, talking, living his life. Then Medicare kicked in and he went for his wellbeing checkup.
After diagnosis, testing, treatments/surgery, complications, hospital stays, he was dead. Took about 4 months after his "checkup.' For his "wellbeing'.
There is literally NO DOUBT in my mind that his death was directly caused by the interventions he received. He died after they put him in a medically induced coma from all the complications caused by the treatments and surgery.
Has everyone figured out yet that LS has an agenda? Honestly, it's tiresome.
I am willing to give anybody the benefit of the doubt as this is a discussion forum but it has to start from an intellectually honest sincere position. There are many facets to the topic but they seem to be ignored in order to enhance the bottom line of conventional healthcare killing people.
I am not interested in superficial hit-and-run headline topics with no meat-to-the-bone discussions meant solely for shock and awe. That pattern is beginning to build and it won't be well received by many.
Sadly I have to agree with you. We can do better.
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