As reported on National Public Radio (NPR) online, “A study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine says medical errors should rank as the third-leading cause of death in the United States — and highlights how shortcomings in tracking vital statistics may hinder research and keep the problem out of the public eye.
based on an analysis of prior research, the Johns Hopkins study estimates that more than 250,000 Americans die each year from medical errors. On the CDC's official list, that would rank just behind heart disease and cancer, which each took about 600,000 lives in 2014, and in front of respiratory disease, which caused about 150,000 deaths,” for an estimated average of 400,000 deaths a year and this is only in US however in developing countries there are no recent studies on the cases.
But the problem is that no one knows exactly how many deaths are really caused by medical errors, in part because the coding system used by the CDC to record death certificate data “doesn't capture things like communication breakdowns, diagnostic errors and poor judgment that cost lives,”