Medical errors kill 98,000 each year in U.S.

According to a study conducted by the Institute of Medicine, as many as 98,000 Americans die needlessly each year due to medical errors.

That means, more people die from medical mistakes yearly than from highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. Deaths from medication errors alone -- more than 7,000 annually -- exceed those from workplace injuries.

Although hospitals are a breeding ground for deadly mistakes, the Institute's report noted that they occur in every health care setting: day-surgery and outpatient clinics, retail pharmacies, nursing homes, as well as home care.

"These stunningly high rates of medical errors -- resulting in deaths, permanent disability, and unnecessary suffering -- are simply unacceptable in a medical system that promises first to 'do no harm,'" said William Richardson, chair of the committee that wrote the report.

The committee said that know-how exists to prevent many of these mistakes, and set as a minimum goal a 50% reduction in errors over the next five years.

"We believe that with adequate leadership, attention, and resources, improvements can be made," Richardson stated. "As we say in the report, 'It may be part of human nature to err, but it is also part of human nature to create solutions, find better alternatives, and meet the challenges ahead.'"

The majority of medical errors do not result from individual recklessness, the report pointed out, but from basic flaws in the way the health system is organized.

Stocking patient-care units in hospitals, for example, with certain full-strength drugs -- even though they are toxic unless diluted -- has resulted in deadly mistakes.

And illegible writing in medical records has resulted in administration of a drug for which the patient has a known allergy.

In addition, the medical industry has become so compartmentalized that few doctors deal with a patient as a whole. Instead, a group of "specialists" each treat a separate part of the person and often have little coordination with other treating doctors. One seldom has complete information about the medicines prescribed by the others.

In general, health care is a decade or more behind other high-risk industries in its attention to ensuring basic safety, the Institute report noted. The chance of dying in a domestic airline flight or at the workplace has declined dramatically in recent decades, in part because of the creation of federal agencies that focus on safety. Yet, the chances of dying in a hospital from a mistake are increasing.

The report also said the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates prescription and over-the-counter drugs and medical devices, needs to increase its attention to public safety.

Efforts should be made, the committee stated, to eliminate similar-sounding drug names as well as confusing labels and packaging that foster mistakes. Numerous studies have documented errors in prescribing medications and dispensing by pharmacists and unintentional mistakes on the part of the patient.

SOURCES: "To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System," Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, Nov. 1999.