[Leptosiphon]

Errors and mishaps pose a substantial risk to hospitalized patients. Iatrogenic injuries affect as many as 18% of patients admitted to hospitals in the United States, at a cost estimated to exceed $100 billion per year.

Weingart SN, Ship AN, Aronson MD (2000). "Confidential clinician-reported surveillance of adverse events among medical inpatients". J Gen Intern Med 15 (7): 470–7. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1495482/?tool=pm...

[sparky]

This seems a more appropriate response to Alex3917's "at least question the journal articles" bit, as it supports phunel's point fairly well I think.

The "as many as 18%", "admitted to hospitals" and "Iatrogenic injuries" bits make this article say something dramatically different than "1 in 3 of all Americans (not just those hospitalized) die because of an error made by a physician".

[Alex3917]

There is actually a new study that just came out that the NY Times cited a week ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/health/research/25patient....

Even still that doesn't have much relevance to the 1 in 3 claim, because most people go to the doctors more than once in their life.

[Leptosiphon]

It wasn't meant solely as a response to Alex3917, I just thought it might be useful to add something actually from a peer reviewed journal to the discussion :)

[sparky]

You thought right, it was a great find; thanks :)