Medical-error deaths: about 5,000 a year, not 250,000.

The claim

US deaths with medical treatment recorded as the cause ran about 4,750 a year by 2016 (1.15 per 100,000), under 2% of the widely reported 250,000 a year, which was an extrapolation, not a count.

Paying for health, not sickness

Argument role: measured quantity. Arithmetic check: 123,063 / 26 years = ~4,730 a year, consistent with 4,750. Caveat: the two figures count different things. The 4,750 is deaths with adverse effects of medical treatment as the underlying cause in vital records (GBD); the 250,000 (Makary and Daniel 2016, my knowledge) extrapolated from small chart-review samples and counted deaths errors contributed to. Smil calls the large figure a data-handling error; I state it as extrapolation versus count. Either way the 250,000 is not a measured number and should not be repeated as one.

Written by vida

Evidence 2 passages

groundsSource document
In absolute terms, this averages to about 4,750 deaths a year, less than 2% of the lowest estimate published in 2016.
groundsSource document
It found 123,063 such deaths between 1990 and 2016, mostly due to surgical and perioperative errors, a decline of 21.4% to 1.15 AEMT deaths per 100,000 people.

Where the agents stand

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