A study published in 2016 in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) identified “medical error” as the third leading cause of death in the United States. Study authors reported that medical errors are responsible for the deaths of about 251,000 Americans each year—up from the nearly 100,000 Americans estimated by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1999 to die annually after errors committed by doctors and other medical personnel.1 2 3 4 Co-authored by Martin Makary, MD and research fellow Michael Daniels of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the study defined medical error as:
an unintended act (either of omission or commission) or one that does not achieve its intended outcome, the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended (an error of execution), the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim (an error of planning), or a deviation from the process of care that may or may not cause harm to the patient.1
“There’s vast underrecognition, underpreparation, and underfunding of the problem of medical care gone awry, even though it has a significant impact on public health,” Dr. Makary said. “It boils down to people dying from the care that they receive rather than the disease for which they are seeking care.”3 5
The study by Makary and Daniels placed medical error behind only heart disease, which accounted for 614,348 deaths annually, and cancer, responsible for 591,699 deaths per year, as the deadliest killers and well ahead of respiratory disease (147,101), accidents (136,053), stroke (133,103), Alzheimer’s (93,541), diabetes (76,488), influenza and pneumonia (55,227), kidney disease (48,146), and suicide (42,773).1 2
CDC Releases New Data on Leading Causes of Death
Recently, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) released provisional data on the top causes of deaths in the U.S. in 2023. According to the NCHS, heart disease remained the leading killer in the country, estimated to have caused 680,909 deaths. The second leading killer was cancer, with 613,331 deaths.6 7
The third leading killer was unintentional injuries, with 222,518 deaths, followed by stroke (162,639), chronic lower respiratory disease (145,350), Alzheimer’s disease (114,034), diabetes (95,181), kidney disease (55,250), chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (52,220), COVID-19 (49,928), suicide (49,303), and influenza and pneumonia (45,182).6
Medical Error Should Be Counted
It’s worth noting the third leading killer, unintentional injuries, in that it is so vague—almost as if there is an attempt to hide something or a lack of interest in being more specific. Makary alluded to this when he wrote to the CDC in 2016:
Currently the CDC uses a deaths collection system that only tallies causes of death occurring from diseases, morbid conditions, and injuries. The information on death certificates filled out by physicians, funeral directors, medical examiners, and coroners form the basis of an annually list of the most common causes of death. We found that the death certificate form has a major limitation.
We suggest that the CDC allow physicians to list medical error as the cause of death, and, in the interim, the CDC should list medical error as the third most common cause of death…8 9
If you look closely, what Makary and Daniels did in their study was to break out the unintentional injuries category into medical error and accidents. These are still broad categories, but at least the medical error category provides an indication of a problem that can be addressed. Under the current CDC system for identifying the leading killers, it is unclear just how many Americans are being harmed and killed as a result of mistakes made by the medical trade industry.
It is likely that the number of deaths caused by medical error is contained within the unintentional injuries and that it accounts for a large portion, if not most, of the deaths in that category. But there is no way to know for sure.
It only makes sense to understand precisely how and how much medical error contributes to mortality in the U.S. “Recognizing the role of medical error in health care has enormous implications for medicine,” wrote Makary. “At minimum, listing the death burden of medical error would help create an open dialog about the problem. … We need more honest conversations about the problem.”
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Click here to view References:2 Makary MA, Daniel M. Medical error—the third leading cause of death in the US. BMJ 2016; 353: i2139.
3 Swetlitz I. Medical errors are third-leading cause of death in the US. STAT May 3, 2016.
4 Charatan F. Medical errors kill almost 100000 Americans a year. BMJ Dec. 11, 1999; 319(7224): 1519.
5 Cha AE. Researchers: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States. The Washington Post May 3, 2016.
6 Ahmad FB, Cisewski JA, Anderson RN. Leading Causes of Death in the US, 2019-2023. JAMA Aug. 8, 2024.
7 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mortality in the United States — Provisional Data, 2023. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report Aug. 8, 2024; 73(31): 677–681.
8 Makary M. Letter to the CDC. May 1, 2016.
9 Sipherd R. The third-leading cause of death in US most doctors don’t want you to know about. CNBC Feb. 22, 2018.
11 Responses
I’m not sure why anyone is surprised by this. Medical has been a leading cause of death for 50 years or more.
I wonder what effect on patient safety, nurses on 12+ hour shifts has had ? This exists mostly so the nurses can have a 3day week for personal reasons. It should NEVER be permitted. NEVER.
No, this was implemented to provide continuity of patient care. As one RN who quit hospital work due to 12 hour shifts, I can assure you not all of us wanted 12 hour shifts.
The leading cause of death is abortion…but no one wants to talk about that.
You are right!
Amen. This is by far the leading cause of death and has been since 1973. 😢 I believe there’s been over 65 million since 1973. The CDC doesn’t mention this because they’re in with Planned Parenthood.
this does not surprise me because in the aviation business there is a similar problem where they blame the pilot for just about every plane wreck when in fact the pilot is often not because but the consequence of a failure of process these unintentional errors that lead to the injuries and deaths have nothing to do with the practice of Medicine nor even the facility they have everything to do with a failure to have a process in place that acts as a guide to continuous process Improvement therefore the result is we have unintended consequences the process is the problem not the people if you give a doctor the wrong information in the wrong sequence he’s going to cause a problem if you give the position and the facility the right information in the right sequence that will help reduce variability in the outcome ultimately the process will be strong enough to safeguard against other errors through continuous process Improvement unfortunately that’s nowhere to be seen in the United States of America in our third world medical government run medical system
Nothing coming from CDC can be trusted. It is a corrupt institution run by depraved and evil people.
I Absolutely!
I can say that some of these deaths are not “medical errors,” but attempts to get the patient to stay in the hospital, and increase the hospital’s revenue. My mother had a transient ischemic attack, and very high blood pressure due to an increased amount of sodium in her diet. I was told by the paramedics to bring her to a hospital to have her checked out. I did the next day. I sat with her in the ER room, and the nurses — on the orders of the doctors on duty — gave her an IV of sodium chloride, essentially salt water. I noted her blood pressure with the paramedics the day before, which was 175 / 85, and after the sodium chloride, it was 199 / 78. Her blood pressure monitor kept beeping loudly, in emergency mode, and no one came to the room. I had to inform the doctors on duty, who refused to look at me, and it was only after 5-10 minutes did they arrive. When I left the hospital with my mom, one of the doctors said they would give her plavax if she stayed the night in the hospital. I think these were not errors, but an attempt to make her sicker, so she would stay in the hospital and they could get more money. I think the medical establishment has to be removed from the capitalist system for the human race to survive.
A major reason for 12 hour shifts is to reduce the time needed to give report and transition to the next shift.