Medical Errors Are Third Leading Cause of Death, Study Finds

After heart disease and cancer, medical errors kill more Americans than anything else, claiming a quarter of a million lives a year, according to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

If bungles and safety lapses in the hospital were accounted for as deaths from disease and injury are, they would be the third most common cause of death in the U.S., leading to more fatalities than respiratory disease, the report in the British Medical Journal argues.

Medical error is a broad label. It could include delivering the wrong drug, misreading a patient’s chart, or operating on the ...