The Increasing Incidence and Cost of Medical Malpractice

 

The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2019 raised the alarm while calling for urgent action to reduce patient harm in healthcare. The United Nations (UN) specialized agency stated that medical malpractice results in 2.6 million deaths annually.

“Most of these deaths are avoidable. The personal, social and economic impact of patient harm leads to losses of trillions of US dollars worldwide,” the body said in its statement.

Due to the growing rate of medical errors and malpractice, scientists at Johns Hopkins in 2016 proposed it should rank as the third leading cause of death in the U.S., a position only behind heart disease and cancer, respectively.

Back in 2016, I posted about the Institute of Medicine numbers already accumulated on this continuing problem. Here’s the link:

Metrics For A New ‘Patient-Centric’ Safety Movement

Here is the link to the more recent story about the WHO study release: https://www.digitaljournal.com/life/is-medical-malpractice-becoming-a-trend/article#ixzz7tCwxBoNY