Medical Errors: The Health Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight

Medical Harm: A Public Health Issue We’re Not Addressing

Medical errors might seem rare and limited to serious incidents, but the truth is far more shocking. Medical errors kill an estimated 250,000 people every year in the United States, making it the third leading cause of death. In addition to the high number of fatalities, millions of people are injured every year by misdiagnoses, medication errors, surgical complications, and outright negligence. Thousands of patients fight back by filing medical malpractice lawsuits, but harmful medical errors still persist.

The Scope of the Problem

With millions affected every year, the problem is clearly serious. However, it’s not easy to measure the full extent of medical harm. Death certificates don’t usually list “medical error” as the cause of death and not all incidents are reported.

Even the figure of 250,000 deaths every year is disputed. The Institute of Medicine estimates the number of yearly deaths to be between 44,000 and 98,000. Still, that’s a lot of people being harmed by an establishment that is supposed to provide healing. But the problem extends beyond deaths and serious injuries. Adverse events like hospital-acquired infections and even minor complications impact thousands of patients every year and are often avoidable.

Medical harm doesn’t have to kill or disable someone to be unacceptable. Preventable harm isn’t rare. It’s systemic. And that deserves more scrutiny.

Diagnostic Errors Are Serious Yet Often Overlooked

Patients assume that their test results are definitive and specialist referrals are accurate. That’s not always the case. People are misdiagnosed all the time with conditions they don’t have, causing them to undergo treatment they don’t need, including invasive surgeries.

While some medical injuries are caused by negligent actions, others are caused by inaction. For example, failure to diagnose someone accurately or at all can cause harm. So can a misdiagnosis. Unfortunately, diagnostic errors aren’t always obvious, and that can delay life-saving treatment.

According to the National Academy of Medicine, most people experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime. This makes diagnostic errors a routine risk and not a rare event. Experts estimate that the number of annual diagnostic errors exceeds 12 million. The most common misdiagnoses include stroke, infections, and cancer. All three of these medical conditions require fast intervention.  

Medication Errors Are Dangerous

Medication errors are common and include unnecessary prescriptions, contraindicated medication, wrong dosages, incorrect administration instructions, and lack of monitoring for side effects. Some medication errors are minor but others can cause dangerous interactions with other drugs.

Other medication errors seem less serious but are still harmful. For example, doctors often prescribe unnecessary antibiotics “just in case,” even when the issue appears to be viral. However, viral infections don’t respond to antibiotics and using them casually can create antibiotic resistance. There’s also a chance that the patient will experience an allergic reaction or serious side effects.

Surgical Errors Can Be Devastating

Unlike misdiagnoses and medication errors, preventable surgical errors can be particularly harmful. For example, these errors include surgeons operating on the wrong body part, performing the wrong procedure, leaving surgical instruments inside a person’s body, and various errors regarding anesthesia.

Why Do Medical Errors Persist?

Although it does happen, most medical errors aren’t caused by just one careless doctor or surgeon. These errors are often the result of systemic problems that arise from a flawed system. For instance, communication errors are common and often contribute to patient harm. This can include conversations between providers that omit important information or leave discharge instructions incomplete.

Another big contributing factor is burnout. Healthcare workers are constantly stressed and often work double shifts. Exhaustion and burnout from being short staffed increases the likelihood of mistakes.

Additionally, there’s no way to track all incidents uniformly across the entire country. There’s no national reporting system, and many errors – including serious ones – go undocumented. This presents a serious barrier to resolving the problem.

Patients Aren’t Powerless

Even though the problem is largely rooted in systemic failure, patients can regain some control over their health outcomes by getting at least one second opinion before undergoing any kind of treatment, including taking prescription drugs.

Medical Harm Needs to Be Treated Like a Public Health Emergency

Medical errors cause serious, preventable harm to millions of Americans every year, and addressing patient safety at a systemic level doesn’t seem to be a priority. If this crisis is going to be resolved, medical harm needs to be treated as a public health emergency rather than an inconvenient consequence of a complex medical system. 

Until this happens, medical errors will remain a major health crisis hiding in plain sight.