Medical Error Is Not The Third Leading Cause Of Deaths
The bad science behind a commonly-cited statistic
There’s an common claim splashed around whenever we talk about medical issues — that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States. It is so ubiquitous that you can find it quoted in TV dramas, thrown around in news stories, and constantly referred to online every time anyone wants to make a point about how bad the healthcare system is.
And it’s quite a persuasive argument for several reasons. Everyone agrees that the medical establishment sometimes harms people. If you don’t know how these things are calculated, the idea that medical errors could cause a lot of death is not itself ridiculous. We’ve all heard tales of lawsuits galore targeting bad doctors, naughty nurses, and other problematic professionals in the healthcare space.
Fortunately, the statistic is completely ludicrous. Medical error is a serious issue, and is the focus of an enormous amount of research and quality improvement in hospitals. However, it is nowhere near the third leading cause of death in the United States - it probably doesn’t even make the top 15.
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