“The now famous report on medical errors from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) - “To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System” - included dramatic and now often-quoted statistics. At least 44,000 to 98,000 deaths may occur annually as a result of medical errors in US hospitals. These numbers, if accurate, would make hospitals the eighth leading cause of death in America and do not even include medical errors in the outpatient setting. This would rank the lethality of US hospitals ahead of motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, and AIDS.”
See on whsc.emory.edu