Most of us know that heart disease and cancer are among the biggest killers in the United States. They’re actually numbers one and two, having caused 614,000 and 591,000 deaths, respectively, in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But the third leading killer, which takes the lives of about 250,000 Americans every year—is one that few people have ever considered: medical errors. And in a bizarrely ironic twist, those deaths are happening at the hands of professionals who are trained to help us live a longer, healthier life.
To put this in perspective, medical errors kill more people than strokes, car accidents, guns, and drug overdoses combined. So why haven’t we heard about this before? In large part, it’s because the insurance billing system is organized around diseases, conditions, tests, procedures, and medication—all of which are assigned a number that physicians, hospitals, and labs can put on a form so they can get paid. It never occurred to the people who created billing codes to have one for mistakes.
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