Medical error is third biggest cause of death in the US, experts say

• Researchers found more than 9.5% of deaths in US are due to medical error
• They used studies since there is no US system for coding these deaths

Medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US, accounting for 250,000 deaths every year, according to an analysis released on Tuesday.

There is no US system for coding these deaths, but Martin Makary and Michael Daniel, researchers at Johns Hopkins University's school of medicine, used studies from 1999 onward to find that medical errors account for more than 9.5% of all fatalities in the US.