But computers cost money, and in today's managed care environment, most doctors are squeezed for cash. And in any event, as Dr. Leape pointed out, I should have been grateful, not mad. The doctor made a mistake. He caught it. He called me right away.
Mistakes happen all the time.
Although experts believe medical mistakes happen with alarming frequency, there is scant research to document them. The New York study was the most extensive. Dr. Lucian Leape, a professor of health policy at Harvard Medical School, analyzed discharge records of more than 30,000 patients from 51 state hospitals in 1984. He found that 3.7 percent suffered an injury from their treatment that was severe enough to disable them or prolong their hospital stay. When extrapolated to the number of people hospitalized in the country in 1997, the institute calculated there were 98,000 deaths.