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PBS News Hour

Is fatal medical error a leading cause of death?

The CDC does not list “medical error” as a cause of death in its annual mortality statistics. But according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the nation. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Dr. Martin Makary of Johns Hopkins, the report’s author, about why medical errors are usually ignored and how patients and doctors can try to avoid them.