Hospitals & the Value of Advocates

Hospital injuries and deaths

Unsafe care is a leading cause of death

Preventable medical errors and unsafe care in U.S. and global hospitals contribute to hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of injuries every year, according to the World Health Organization and landmark studies such as Johns Hopkins Medicine’s diagnostic error report.

What the numbers say

• In the United States, estimates put deaths from preventable medical errors at between 200,000 and 400,000 a year, making unsafe care a leading cause of death.
• Worldwide, the WHO estimates more than 3 million deaths a year from unsafe care — and says more than half of these harms are preventable.
• Diagnostic errors alone are tied to roughly 371,000 deaths and 424,000 permanent disabilities a year in the U.S., with vascular events, infections and cancers accounting for 75% of those serious harms.
• Falls are among the most common: 700,000 to 1 million patient falls occur in U.S. hospitals each year, causing around 250,000 injuries and up to 11,000 deaths.
• Other frequent harms tracked by CMS and The Joint Commission include post-operative sepsis, medication errors, pressure ulcers and surgical complications.

How incidents are tracked and reported

• Inside the hospital, standard measures such as CMS PSI 90 track pressure injuries, accidental cuts, post-surgical blood clots and in-hospital fall fractures. You can compare hospitals using CMS complications and deaths data and the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade.
• At the bedside, patients, families and staff can report a safety issue or accident to the charge nurse, the patient advocacy department or the hospital’s hotline. A formal incident report should give a chronological account with exact times, clear headings and the names of any witnesses.