The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences stated in 1998 that there are annually between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths from errors occurring during hospital care. This number of deaths could be compared with about 43,000 annual traffic deaths. The Institute of Medicine figure probably underestimates the number of deaths due to medical error, since it does not include errors occurring in outpatient surgical centers, in doctor's offices or in any outpatient setting. It also does not include errors where death occurred out of hospital after discharge and was not thereafter reported to the hospital.

Notably, the error rate is calculated ONLY on deaths. As anyone with any sense will agree, most of the injuries due to medical error are serious and even disabling but do not cause death. Therefore, there could well be several hundred thousand serious injuries due to medical error annually.

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