According to the Institute of Medicine, 98,000 people die every year in the United States from preventable medical errors like hospital acquired infections. That makes preventable medical errors the 6th leading cause of death in the US!

Medical errors not only cause serious harm to patients and their families, but they cost the healthcare system a tremendous amount of money and resources to treat.  Those costs get passed along to the patients in the form of higher bills and higher premiums which restrict access to care for hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Better, safer care is possible, and there are hospitals around the country that have already figured out ways to bring infection rates and other errors close to zero.  I think that Americans deserve to feel safe when they are at their most vulnerable, and it is time to demand that hospitals take action.