Johns Hopkins published the landmark study in 2016 estimating that medical errors kill more than 250,000 Americans every year, making it the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer. That was a decade ago. The problem has not improved. In many ways, it has gotten worse.
Hospital staffing shortages have reached crisis levels across Illinois and the country. Nursing shortages mean that registered nurses are covering more patients than is safe. When one nurse is responsible for eight or ten patients instead of four or five, things get missed. Medication errors increase. Vital sign checks are delayed. Fall risks are not addressed. Patient call lights go unanswered for dangerous lengths of time. The math is simple. Fewer nurses per patient equals more errors per patient.
Electronic health records were supposed to reduce errors by standardizing documentation and flagging dangerous drug interactions. In practice, they have created new categories of errors. Copy-and-paste documentation means that inaccurate information from one encounter gets replicated across subsequent encounters. Alert fatigue means physicians override safety warnings because they get so many alerts that they stop reading them. Drop-down menus lead to wrong selections that go unnoticed. The technology is only as good as the humans using it, and the humans are exhausted.
The productivity pressure in modern healthcare is a direct contributor to errors. Physicians are expected to see more patients in less time. A primary care doctor who used to see twenty patients a day is now seeing thirty-five. An ER physician is processing patients faster than ever because the waiting room is full and administration is tracking throughput metrics. Speed and thoroughness are in direct conflict, and when speed wins, patients lose.
The culture of medicine still resists transparency about errors. Despite decades of patient safety initiatives, many hospitals do not have genuine no-blame reporting cultures. Physicians are afraid of malpractice liability, so errors get buried in the chart instead of disclosed to the patient. Hospitals are afraid of reputation damage, so they settle cases with confidentiality agreements that prevent the public from knowing what happened. This secrecy prevents systemic learning and allows the same errors to repeat.
What does this mean for you? It means that if you or a loved one received medical care and something went wrong, it is worth investigating. The odds that a medical error contributed to a bad outcome are higher than most people think. Not every bad outcome is malpractice, but every bad outcome deserves scrutiny.
Call me at 312-500-4500 if something does not add up about your medical care. I will review the records and give you an honest assessment.
Medical errors can take many forms.
For instance, a doctor might diagnose you with an incorrect condition or illness. As a result, you might receive the wrong treatment, which may cause you even more problems.
In other situations, physicians tell patients they don’t have serious conditions, even though they actually do have major medical problems. In other words, they are failing to diagnose their patients’ conditions.
In these situations, the patients’ conditions can quickly worsen. This may lead to permanent health issues.
Unfortunately, medical errors can cause not only physical problems but also emotional and mental damages. For instance, if you become paralyzed due to a medical error, your mental health can quickly decline.
Let’s take a peek below at some of the most common causes of today’s medical errors — and what you can do about them.
In many cases today, physicians don’t prescribe the correct medications or dosages. This is a training issue (more on that later).
In addition, sometimes their prescriptions are illegible, so nurses end up reading them incorrectly.
Another common prescription-related medical error? Pharmacies read prescriptions correctly but fill them incorrectly.
To combat the second abovementioned issue, more doctors are sending their prescriptions electronically versus writing them by hand.
To remedy the third issue mentioned above, robots may become increasingly useful for filling prescriptions. After all, they’re less prone to making mistakes.
Communication breakdowns are yet another leading cause of errors in the medical field.
These breakdowns can occur in either written or verbal communication. Also, they can easily happen among doctors, nurses, health care team members and patients.
Human issues are also causing many of today’s medical errors.
When we say “human issues,” we’re talking about medical professionals’ failure to follow care standards, processes, procedures or policies efficiently or properly.
Examples of human issues are poor documentation or inadequate specimen labeling. Inadequate staffing can also be an issue, as overworked staff are more at risk of making dangerous medical mistakes.
In addition, doctors and other medical care providers may simply lack the knowledge they need to provide appropriate care in a given situation.
It’s critical that staff have the appropriate postsecondary training for their roles. But they also need to complete refresher courses and training sessions. That’s the only way they’ll stay current in their specialty areas.
If doctors wish to transition into another area of the medical field or do another kind of surgery, they absolutely must complete the appropriate training.
Along with human issues, technical issues can result in serious medical errors. For instance, medical devices, equipment, implants or grafts may fail or cause complications.
In some cases, the culprit is the lack of adequate policies and procedures altogether.
A number of today’s medical errors additionally stem from a lack of training for temporary workers or new employees, too. Thus, it’s paramount that the knowledge of experienced staff is transferred to inexperienced staff before they start caring for patients.
Also, if patients are transferred from one facility to another, it’s paramount that their relevant information goes with them.
The proper flow of patient information is necessary in all health care settings, particularly within various service areas. If information doesn’t flow properly, three things can happen — none of them good.
First, doctors won’t have the information they need to make informed prescribing decisions.
Second, doctors won’t have the important test results needed to make decisions.
And finally, medication orders will be poorly coordinated when care responsibilities are being transferred from one party to another.
Let’s say that your doctor inappropriately identifies or assesses you. These mistakes can quickly cause you serious medical issues or even death.
In addition, in many cases, patients who are placed in hospitals are not given the supervision they need. For instance, the facilities might have volunteers or students stand in for absent nurses.
When hospitals negligently fail to monitor their patients properly, their patients face a higher risk of suffering injuries.
Another commonly overlooked patient-related issue that results in medical errors is doctors’ failure to obtain patient consent.
Hospital staff and doctors must give their patients — or their families — information about the treatment procedures that the patients need. Only then can the patients and their loved ones understand the potential risks of the procedures.
If a procedure comes with high risks, a medical care provider must then obtain consent from the patient and the family before completing it.
Sometimes the cause of a medical error isn’t a doctor’s lack of knowledge or their inability to communicate, for example. Instead, the problem might be the doctor’s inability to concentrate.
The grim reality is that doctors are oftentimes reluctant to pursue mental care for themselves for suicidal ideation and depression. After all, they may worry that this will keep them from being able to renew their licenses.
Licensing boards at the state level generally have good intentions when interviewing doctors. However, their questions may deter doctors from seeking care.
Such questions include the following:
Rather than seeking care, some doctors suffer in silence. And as a result, their patients suffer along with them due to medical malpractice.
Some other reasons behind today’s high number of medical errors include the following:
Still other causes of health care errors are medication mix-ups and even computer breakdowns that aren’t resolved in a timely manner.
Experts say that although we know that medical mistakes are a huge problem today, we don’t have data on these errors like we should. That’s because our current system for reporting on medical errors in the United States could be better.
The truth is, medical errors aren’t cited as one of the causes of patient death among the ICD codes.
As a result, medical errors aren’t mentioned on the CDC’s yearly list of the most frequent causes of patient death.
In turn, medical errors aren’t given the national research attention they need.
In today’s culture, more emphasis has been placed on pinpointing who to blame for problems instead of seeking solutions. Thus, it may come as no surprise that little has been done to investigate strategies for decreasing systemic medical mistakes and how they impact patient mortality.
Patients today must push for improvements in medical error-related data collection. The more they do this, the more improvement we may see in this area in the years to come.
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Yes. A landmark study from Johns Hopkins University published in the BMJ estimated that medical errors cause over 250,000 deaths per year in the United States, making it the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer. Some researchers believe the actual number is even higher because medical errors are often not listed on death certificates.
The main contributors include hospital understaffing, physician fatigue from excessive work hours, poor communication between healthcare providers during shift changes or transfers, systemic failures in hospital safety protocols, overreliance on electronic medical records without proper verification, and a medical culture that sometimes discourages reporting errors.
Yes. If a medical error caused or contributed to your family member's death, you may have a wrongful death medical malpractice claim under Illinois law (740 ILCS 180/). You can recover damages for lost income, loss of companionship, funeral expenses, and the pain and suffering your loved one experienced before death.
Medical errors often go unreported because there is no federal requirement to report them, death certificates rarely list 'medical error' as a cause of death, hospitals may classify errors as 'complications' rather than mistakes, and healthcare providers fear litigation and professional consequences. This underreporting makes the problem even harder to address.
Be an active participant in your care. Ask questions about every medication, test, and procedure. Bring a family member to appointments as a second set of eyes and ears. Verify your identity and the procedure before any surgery. Request a second opinion for major diagnoses. And if something goes wrong, contact a medical malpractice attorney at 312-500-4500 to understand your rights.
Under 735 ILCS 5/13-212, an Illinois medical malpractice lawsuit must generally be filed within two years from the date the injured person knew or reasonably should have known about both the injury and that it was caused by the alleged malpractice, subject to an absolute four-year statute of repose from the date of the negligent act itself. For wrongful death medical malpractice cases, the Illinois Wrongful Death Act (740 ILCS 180/2) sets a two-year statute of limitations from the date of death, with the medical malpractice four-year statute of repose still applying as an outer limit. For minors, the statute of limitations is extended to eight years from the date of malpractice, but cannot extend beyond the child's 22nd birthday. These deadlines are strict, and the analysis of when the clock started running is often the most important issue in a malpractice case. Call early.
Section 2-622 of the Illinois Code of Civil Procedure requires every medical malpractice complaint to be accompanied by (1) an affidavit from the plaintiff's attorney stating that a qualified healthcare professional has reviewed the records and (2) a written report from that healthcare professional confirming that the case has a reasonable and meritorious basis. The healthcare professional must be in the same specialty as the defendant for most cases. Failure to attach the affidavit and report can result in dismissal. The certificate of merit requirement is one of the reasons medical malpractice cases require careful early investigation and substantial upfront cost - the expert review must happen before the lawsuit is even filed. It is also the reason most personal injury attorneys do not handle medical malpractice and refer those cases out.
The legal test in Illinois is whether the healthcare provider deviated from the standard of care that a reasonably careful provider in the same specialty would have followed under the same or similar circumstances. Some bad outcomes are known and accepted complications of treatment - infections after surgery, allergic reactions to medication, surgical risks fully disclosed in advance - and do not constitute malpractice even though the outcome was bad. Other bad outcomes are caused by a clear deviation from the standard of care - wrong-site surgery, missed cancer on a clearly abnormal imaging study, dangerous drug interactions a provider should have caught, failure to act on critical lab values. The distinction is fact-specific and almost always requires expert review of the actual medical records. The 735 ILCS 5/2-622 certificate of merit process is structured around exactly this question. Calling a malpractice attorney to have the records reviewed costs nothing - the firm pays the expert review fees upfront and is reimbursed only if the case settles or wins.
Would you like to know more about medical errors third leading cause of death?
If you or a loved one is dealing with a situation like this, give us a call any time, day or night. We are here to help. 312-500-4500
Scott DeSalvo founded DeSalvo Law to help injured people throughout Chicago and surrounding suburbs. Licensed to practice law in Illinois since 1998, IARDC #6244452, Scott has represented over 3,000 clients in personal injury, workers compensation, and accident cases.
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