According to an article published in the August issue of BMJ quality and Safety, there are more than 43 million hospital injuries caused by unsafe medical care worldwide. The authors reviewed more than 4,000 scientific articles and tracked adverse outcomes from the use of medication, urinary tract infections caused by catheters, systemic infections from indwelling intravenous catheters, hospital-acquired pneumonias, blood clots, falls, and bedsores.
For every 100 hospitalizations there were 14.2 adverse events in high income countries, and 12.7 in low and middle income countries. This means that more and more expensive care has a worse outcome than less care! There are about one million deaths in the US annually related to medical care according to Gary Null's "Death by Medicine."
