A new report says medical errors are the third-leading cause of death in the United States. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, say medical errors cause more than 250,000 deaths every year. If the research is correct, it means deaths caused by doctors’ errors are greater in number than deaths by respiratory disease. That number also is higher than the 150,000 deaths yearly reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC keeps the official statistics about causes of death in the U.S. The Johns Hopkins researchers say the CDC's way of collecting data “fails to classify medical errors separately on the death certificate.” Dr. Martin Makary is a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is also an authority on health reform. He says there is no standardized method for collecting national statistics about such medical care problems.
