You Need A Brave Heart To Read These Medical Malpractice Statistics!

Here are some medical malpractice statistics that will stun you. As per the latest findings of Healthgrades, around 195,000 hospital deaths in the year 2000, 2001, and 2002 each in America was a result of medical malpractice. Researchers scrutinized 37 million records of patients. They used models of mortality and economic impact given by Dr. Chunliu Zhan and Dr. Marlene R. Miller. The study was published in the October 2003 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) had published in a report that about 98,000 deaths were caused every year due to medical malpractice and this should be regarded a serious national issue. In 2006, a follow-up of this report of IOM was released. The medical malpractice statistics of this report revealed that errors in medication were one of the most common errors by doctors. It harmed a minimum of 1.5 million patients annually!

This report also stated that every year, 400,000 preventable injuries related to drugs take place; 800,000 injuries occur in long term care settings while about 530,000 errors occur in outpatient departments. In 2000 alone, the additional medical expense incurred on drug related injuries amounted to approximately $887 million! These medical malpractice statistics focus only a subset of clinic visitors. Imagine how wide the figures would be when taken as a whole!