July 30, 2004

That new Health Grades Inc. report is the subject of discussion on MedPundit and HealthDay/Forbes. One problem pointed out by Dr. Lucian Leape of Harvard School of Public Health, who is one of the authors of a previous widely cited report on medical errors, is that the new report treats as medical error so-called "failure to rescue" which, in HealthDay's words, "is not normally used in calculating deaths from medical errors; it's not an accepted standard." For problems with the earlier literature on medical errors, see these Overlawyered posts, this Manhattan Institute commentary on the Harvard Medical Practice Study, and this Peter Huber column.