Medication Errors Cause Injury and Death

Frank Bailey

Attorney
(866) 735-1102 Ext 435

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Health care is not as safe as it should be. A substantial body of evidence points to medical errors as a leading cause of death and injury in America. These preventable adverse events are the 8th leading cause of death in the United States.

Sizable numbers of Americans are harmed as a result of medical malpractice. Deaths due to preventable adverse events in hospitals (malpractice) exceed the deaths attributable to motor vehicle accidents (43,458), breast cancer (42,297) or AIDS (16,516). This is according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention preliminary data for 1998.
At least 44,000 and perhaps as many as 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of medical errors as reported by The Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences.
Trial attorneys fight everyday to build a safer system of care to ensure that patients are safe from accidental injury. Safety in medical care, if discussed at all by the medical profession, is discussed only behind closed doors under the protection of confidentiality. That is why it is so important to get these issues of patient safety out before the public in a jury trial if you or a loved one have been injured due to a medical error.

For more information on this subject, please refer to the section on Medical Malpractice and Negligent Care.