Medical error is third biggest cause of death in the US, say experts

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-05/b-mei050316.php

Public Release: 3-May-2016
Medical error is third biggest cause of death in the US, say experts
BMJ

Medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US after heart disease and cancer, say experts in The BMJ today.

Martin Makary and Michael Daniel at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore say death certificates in the US have no facility for acknowledging medical error, and they call for better reporting to help understand the scale of the problem and how to tackle it.

Currently, death certification in the US relies on assigning an International Classification of Disease (ICD) code to the cause of death - so causes of death not associated with an ICD code, such as human and system factors, are not captured.

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