craschworks

Managing the Iatrogenic Risks of Risk Management
Jonathan Baert Wiener
9 Risk: Health, Safety & Environment 39 [Winter 1998]

http://www.fplc.edu/RISK/vol9/winter/Wiener.pdf

“…Empirical study of the modern medical system suggests that
iatrogenesis is serious. In the most thorough analysis to date, the
Harvard Medical Practice Study Group studied a representative sample
of over 30,000 hospital records from over 50 hospitals in New York
State. Using carefully developed protocols and trained reviewers, it
found that 3.7% of all hospitalizations induced iatrogenic health events,
of which just more than one in eight (14% of all iatrogenic injuries, and
about 0.5% of all hospitalizations) were iatrogenic fatalities. 2 9

Extrapolating this data to the full U.S. population, suggests a national
annual total of over 1.2 million iatrogenic injuries and over 150,000
iatrogenic deaths from hospitalization amounting to 7.5% of all
deaths in the nation each year, more fatalities than are caused each year
by, e.g., auto (40,000 to 50,000) and occupational accidents (about
6,000) combined.30…”