Medical Malpractice - Frequency and Cost of Medical Errors

Frequency and Cost of Medical Errors

Statistics show that approximately 195,000 people are killed every year by medical errors in the US. The study notes that about 1.14 million patient-safety incidents occurred among the 37 million hospitalizations in the Medicare population over the years 2000-2002. Hospital costs associated with such medical errors were estimated at $324 million in October 2008 alone.

Between 15,000 and 19,000 malpractice suits are brought against doctors each year.

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