Medical mistakes harm 1 in 20

The prevalence of medical mistakes in the U.S. has largely been unknown for some time, with patient death estimates ranging from 44,000 to 98,000. Medical mistakes were also named a leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2018.

Now, researchers are homing in on just how many medical mistakes occur and how many are preventable. Their findings were recently published in The BMJ.

British researchers wanted to know the prevalence of preventable patient harm in hospitals, primary care, and various specialties. They used a systemic review and meta-analysis to estimate the prevalence of harm from five electronic databases and a pooled sample of 337,025 patients.

Of...