Johns Hopkins study suggests medical errors are 3rd-leading cause of death in US

Any statistic can lie, but this one is even more susceptible considering that vague definition of what constitutes a "medical error". I remember looking at this study when it was first published (there should be a 2016 in the title by the way) and it basically attributed any action by a doctor that resulted in a negative outcome as a medical error. For example, that could include a doctor prescribing a treatment that is successful for 99.9999% of patients, but if it fails for that one patient it would be an error.

Gonna post before reading (mistake alert), but was just reading The Patient's Playbook by Leslie Michelson and it begins by talking about what a clustercuss the US healthcare system is.

You'd think your primary care physician would know what medications you are on, and what specialists you'd seen, but they don't work like that unless you laboriously tell them everything you received when they weren't staring at you. It's inefficient to say the least. And it's borderline negligent too.

IIRC this is only looking at hospitals, and it’s likely the second if you include outpatient clinics, nursing homes, etc.

Excessive medical care is why the upper middle class have longer life expectancies than the super wealthy.

Ive heard this statistic before and it's not all that surprising. One of my "mental models" is that humans tend to be pretty bad at things.

Its not mentioned in the article but almost all the doctors I have spoken to seem to have needed to do ridiculous shifts as junior doctors straight out of university. You are doing a highly skilled job under extreme conditions. Most say they get used to it, but still, it doesn't sound like the best idea.