> In a critical commentary, the co-editors-in-chief of the journal BMJ Quality & Safety wrote that the paper’s “headline-friendly” mortality rate — which was 10 times the rate suggested by prior studies — was so implausible that it risked undermining confidence in the entire field of patient safety research.
> Yet the notion that medical errors are the third leading cause of death persists. It’s trumpeted by patient safety advocates and trial attorneys, and became a line on a TV show. News stories continue to cite it.
Which academic has it right? The study you shared is critical of the sources used in the first, but also provides no new data sources. It’s simply skeptical about the rates.
Malpractice law is complex and time consuming. Determining it to be a cause or contributor to a death isn't quite like going "yup, that's pneumonia". Studies are what we use to estimate it, and this one was a big outlier.
Causality itself is a complex philosophical topic. I agree it probably can’t be established.
That’s why death reportings tend to use “died with X”. I understand that there is a sensitivity to ascribe liability or fault. But if someone dies in recovery from a surgery, or worse under anesthesia, that seems like something that could be identified and reported.
> But if someone dies to recovery form a surgery, or worse from anesthesia, that seems like something that could be identified and reported.
We do (for example: https://www.cdc.gov/healthcare-associated-infections/index.h...), but there's significant difference between "malpractice" and "died due to surgical/anesthesia complications". Perfectly administered anesthesia is still risky, which is why we don't give it for, say, mole removal.
Probably because you could die from medical malpractice tomorrow but the final determination will take many years to resolve in the courts. Is there much value in going back and revising a number of deaths from 2019? Maybe. If the numbers are large enough or reflect a pattern that could be corrected/improved. More likely is there is nothing actionable there.
> In a critical commentary, the co-editors-in-chief of the journal BMJ Quality & Safety wrote that the paper’s “headline-friendly” mortality rate — which was 10 times the rate suggested by prior studies — was so implausible that it risked undermining confidence in the entire field of patient safety research.
> Yet the notion that medical errors are the third leading cause of death persists. It’s trumpeted by patient safety advocates and trial attorneys, and became a line on a TV show. News stories continue to cite it.