National Patient Safety Awareness: How can we address preventable health care deaths? (10 March 2021)

Summary

While the US healthcare system is considered one of the best in the world, many American’s may not realise the potential risks they face when seeking and receiving healthcare.

The most recent figures put the rate of preventable healthcare deaths at around 400,000 each year. To put this in perspective, that is more than Alzheimer’s disease, lung cancer, and breast cancer combined kill each year and means that healthcare is the third leading cause of death in the US. That figure does not even reflect the hundreds of thousands of patients who are harmed during their care but do not die.

In this article for The Hill, Jill Steiner Sanko explores how we can address preventable healthcare deaths.