A study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety says the number of deaths that occur because of preventable errors and mistakes in a hospital may be between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year.

Here is a link to the article:

[A New, Evidence-based Estimate of Patient Harms Associated with Hospital Care][1]

That would make medical errors the third-leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease, which is the first, and cancer, which is second. And these are deaths resulting from preventable errors in hospitals. No study has yet estimated the number of deaths that occur because of outpatient negligence, such as misdiagnoses in clinics or prescription errors, or the even greater number of serious injuries that occur. The amazing thing is that, if even a faction of this number died from auto accidents or airplane crashes, there would be a huge effort by the U.S. to find the root causes of the tragedies, and massive efforts would be made to correct the problems. Yet some in Congress still want to restrict the rights of patients to bring lawsuits that would at least identify some of the errors that lead to deaths and injuries from medical negligence. In effect, they want to grant immunity to a medical system that produces appalling statistics as outlined in the Journal of Patient Safety article.

[1]: http://journals.lww.com/journalpatientsafety/Fulltext/2013/09000/A_New,_Evidence_based_Estimate_of_Patient_Harms.2.aspx# “A New, Evidence-based Estimate of Patient Harms Associated with Hospital Care”