According to an article on the FDA's web site, the eighth leading cause of death in the United States is medical error. You are more likely to die as a result of medical error than you are from car accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. The number one reason people go to the hospital is to give birth. Therefore, it only stands to reason that many of the people dying as a result of medical error are women and babies. The hospital is NOT the safest place to give birth.

One hundred thousand people die every year in the US from "nosocomial" infections - meaning infections they contracted in the hospital. "On that day in 1996 when the Valu-Jet plane crashed in the Florida Everglades, killing more than 110 people," writes the president of a consumer group, "at least 220 people died from infections acquired in the hospital." Many of these deaths are completely preventable. -From "Semmelweis" by Michael Greger, MD

"Is US Health Really the Best in the World?" by Barbara Starfield, MD, MPH
Vol. 284 No. 4,
July 26, 2000

US estimates of the combined effect of errors and adverse effects that occur because of iatrogenic (meaning "caused by a doctor or his treatment") damage not associated with recognizable error include:
a.. 12,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery
b.. 7000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals
c.. 20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals
d.. 80,000 deaths/year from nosocomial infections in hospitals
e.. 106,000 deaths/year from nonerror, adverse effects of medications

These total to 225,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes. Three caveats should be noted. First, most of the data are derived from studies in hospitalized patients. Second, these estimates are for deaths only and do not include adverse effects that are associated with disability or discomfort. Third, the estimates of death due to error are lower than those in the IOM report. If the higher estimates are used, the deaths due to iatrogenic causes would range from 230,000 to 284,000. In any case, 225,000 deaths per year constitutes the third leading cause of death in the United States, after deaths from heart disease and cancer. Even if these figures are overestimated, there is a wide margin between these numbers of deaths and the next leading cause of death (cerebrovascular disease). Recognition of the harmful effects of health care interventions, and the likely possibility that they account for a substantial proportion of the excess deaths in the United States compared with other comparably industrialized nations, sheds new light on imperatives for research and health policy.