Was the IOM estimate of medical errors correct?

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in their landmark report – To Err is Human – estimated that the number of deaths from medical errors is 44 ,000 to 98, 000. The report ushered the Quality and Safety Movement, which became a dominant force in all hospitals. Yet the number of deaths from medical errors climbed. It is now touted to be the 3rd leading cause of death. How easy is it to precisely quantify the number of deaths from medical errors? Not many physicians challenged the methodologies of the IOM report. Some feared that they’d be accused of “making excuses for doctors.” Many simply didn’t have a sufficient grip on statistics of measurement sciences. One exception was Rodney Hayward – who was then an early career researcher, a measurement scientist, who studied how sensitive the estimates of medical errors were to a range of assumptions.