Recently, a paper written by researchers at Johns Hopkins asserted that medical error was the third leading cause of the death in the United States. This received — as you might imagine — considerable coverage in the media. The researchers proposed that death certificates should include a qualifier or indicator that medical error was linked to the death, if in fact it was, so that better statistics could be obtained.
I certainly can’t argue with the fact that we do not have good data about how frequently medical error occurs, or how frequently such errors contribute to serious disability or death.
However, the paper also offered a case illustration which did show how un-illuminating the death certificate is, but in my view, did not actually demonstrate a preventable error. I’ll share the following ideas about error reporting and error prevention:
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