Research published in the British Medical Journal found that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States, trailing only heart disease and cancer.
Because of this, medical researchers say hospital errors should be a top priority for the medical community in the coming years, said Dr. Martin Makary, a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
“Top-ranked causes of death as reported by the CDC inform our country’s research funding and public health priorities,” Dr. Makary. “Right now, cancer and heart disease get a ton of attention, but since medical errors don’t appear on the list, the problem doesn’t get the funding and attention it deserves.”
That’s easier said than done, though, because many medical errors aren’t well tracked. The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention captures information about a person’s cause of death on their death certificates, but they do so using the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes for cause of death, which doesn’t have a code for human/systematic errors. The US isn’t alone in using the ICD codes, either. Records indicate that 117 countries use the system to track mortality statistics. Study authors are calling for changes to the way mortality statistics are reported to get a better understanding of the problem so they can create better strategies for reducing deaths as a result of medical mistakes.
Dr. Makary added that “incidence rates for deaths directly attributable to medical care gone awry haven’t been recognized in any standardized method for collecting national statistics. The medical coding system was designed to maximize billing for physician services, not to collect national health statistics, as it is currently being used.”
Medical Mistake Study
To better assess the landscape of medical errors in the US, researchers analyzed medical death rate data from 2000 to 2008. Then they examined hospital admission rates from 2013 and extrapolated that based on 35,416,020 hospitalizations, 251,454 deaths stemmed from medical error. That number translates to 9.5 percent of all deaths each year in the US, putting it slightly ahead of respiratory disease as the third leading cause of death.
Study authors hope to change the ICD coding system to get a renewed understanding of the true impact of medical errors, but they’ve also offered some insights as to how we can call attention to the problem and initiate change from within the system. Here are some of their proposed changes:
- Hospitals should carry out rapid and efficient independent investigations into deaths to determine is medical error played a role.
- Making errors more visible so their effects can be understood.
- Opening up discussion about errors and prevention strategies. Oftentimes these are confined to confidential forms or during department morbidity and mortality conferences.
- Changing death certificates to include an extra field asking whether a preventable complication stemming from the patient’s care contributed to the death.