To Err Is Human: Lessons From Malpractice Suits

60% of America’s annual deaths, 1.7 million deaths are due to medical error! Do I have your attention? Those numbers are based on a study [1] of course and are not so much blown out of proportion as just wrong. Extrapolating autopsy findings to hospital deaths peg the deaths from medical error at 40 to 80,000, not the numbers we want to see, but perhaps more realistic and certainly demonstrating the wide range and fuzziness of the numbers. A new study in Diagnosis tries to determine “what diseases account for the majority of serious harms” based on malpractice claims data. A word before continuing, not every iatrogenic death, one due to physicians or healthcare systems, results in lawsuits and while the data used covers about 25% of all cases brought in the US, we still are looking at a biased sample.

The researchers made use of a closed claims database covering nine years of suits focusing on the top three categories associated with malpractice actions; vascular events, i.e., stroke, heart attack, infections like meningitis or sepsis, and cancers. They further refined their focus to diagnostic errors, not treatment errors [2]; and stratified harms following a standard severity of injury scale – "high severity injuries" included significant permanent injuries like loss of a limb, permanent major injury like brain damage, permanent grave injury like the need for lifelong care, and death.