Search Here

Even though doctors are trained to care, diagnose and treat patients, they might still make mistakes. Unfortunately for medical professionals, these mistakes could be the difference between life and death. Over the years, researchers have tried to estimate how many patients die due to medical errors. Each time the studies are conducted, the number keeps rising. In a new study, researchers estimated that nearly 210,000 to 440,000 patients die each year due to mistakes.

The author of this study who estimated the new range is John T. James, a toxicologist at NASA's space center in Houston, TX. James also runs an advocacy group titled Patient Safety America. For these numbers, James used four recent studies that examined the rates of preventable harm done to patents. From these studies, James had data on over 4,200 patients gathered from 2002 to 2008. Based on these findings, the researchers calculated that adverse events affected 21 percent of the medical cases. The events that would be considered lethal affected 1.4 percent of the cases. James used this data and the data on 34 million hospitalizations in 2007 to calculate his own estimate.

Even though James' estimation is a lot higher than previous estimates, ProPublica had three patient safety researchers look over James' numbers and they believe that his estimates are credible. ProPublica is an independent and nonprofit newsroom.

"We need to get a sense of the magnitude of this," James said according to NPR. "Perhaps it is time for a national patient bill of rights for hospitalized patients. All evidence points to the need for much more patient involvement in identifying harmful events and participating in rigorous follow-up investigations od identify root causes."

The study was published in the Journal of Patient Safety.