In 2016, when researchers from the famed Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine revealed that medical mistakes are the third leading cause of death in the U.S., the media, the medical establishment, and the general public were stunned. The fact that medical mistakes occur was not a secret. But their prevalence and the extent to which they cause catastrophic or fatal harm were not yet widely understood.
As this reality has been public knowledge for several years, it probably should not be surprising that researchers from the same institution recently revealed that emergency room misdiagnosis errors are made approximately 7.4 million times every year in the U.S. Yet, this news is, nevertheless, shocking.
What Is Going On?
After reviewing close to 300 medical studies released between 2000-2021, researchers determined that 2.6 million patients suffer preventable harm as a result of the more than 7 million emergency room diagnostic errors made annually. An additional 370,000 patients either die or suffer permanent disability as a result of these errors.
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