Talk:Medical error

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Ballpark figures not very helpful

Think of a number and double it? The first sentence of this article is one of the worst I have seen in Wkipedia, namely "In the United States medical error results in 44 000-98 000 unnecessary deaths each year...." What? Doesn't anyone actually have even a reasonable estimate? The 98,000 figure is 222 per cent higher that the 44,000 figure. We are saying that in 1990 (example) there were between 44 000 and 98 000 unnecessary deaths, and in 1981 there were between 44 000 and 98 000 unnecessary deaths. How can we exect Wikipedia to be taken seriously with such ballpark figures. Moriori (Sorry, forgot to sign).

dude. check the ref. Erich 04:20, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

There are no exact numbers on this because the numbers I have seen are all estimates based on extrapolations. That's right - the data is not good. And that the data is no good is even more alarming! Kd4ttc 19:19, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I am astonished that User:Erich gasboy, a doctor, would defend a single set of data taken selectively from the tonnes of verbiage available through google. I wonder what he would say if I amended the intro to about 20,000 and gave [1] as the authority. Here's a quote from it -- the Institute of Medicine estimates that over 100,000 patients die every year in U.S. hospitals as a result of medical errors or mistakes…. and beginning in 1999 that dialogue was sold to the American public in newspaper banners and on TV news programs across the nation. However, the important story is that 80% or 80,000 of those 100,000 patients die from an infectious disease. This fact – published by the CDC – was noted in earlier reports in 1999, but seldom mentioned when reported on in recent years. The 80,000 who die from infectious diseases are conveniently ‘bundled in’ with the other 20,000, most of whom did die because of medical errors. I believe our current article is demonstrably lacking in integrity and is doing Wikipedia a great disservice.Moriori 23:59, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)