Amenable Mortality

EVERY 5 MINUTES: isn’t this enough to declare a crisis?. The 101,000 preventable deaths documented in the note above equals an unnecessary death of an American every 5 minutes.

Additional Information and Source

Study of 19 countries on minimizing the number of preventable deaths:

• The U.S. ranked 15th out of 19 using 1997-1998 data.
• The U.S. ranked 19th out of 19 using 2002-2003 data.
  • Rankings from 1st to 19th: France, Japan, Australia, Spain, Italy, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Greece, Austria, Germany, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Britain, Ireland, Portugal, United States

75,000 and 101,000 preventable deaths per year

• As indicated below by the Commonwealth Fund information, 75,000 is the conservative number of persons who die in the U.S. due to the United States failing to do an adequate job at prevention, at least as compared to the 18 other countries.
• As reported by the Commonwealth Fund
  • “… authors estimated that approximately 75,000 to 101,00 preventable deaths could be averted in the U.S. “[E]ven the more conservative estimate of 75,000 deaths is almost twice the Institute of Medicine’s (lower) estimate of the number of deaths attributable to medical errors in the United States each year,” the authors say.”
• As also reported by Reuters
  • “ … I wouldn’t say it (the last-place ranking) is a condemnation, because I think health care in the U.S. is pretty good if you have access. But if you don’t, I think that’s the main problem, isn’t it?” (bolding added)
  • ” … the researchers considered deaths before age 75 from numerous causes, including heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, diabetes, certain bacterial infections and complications of common surgical procedures.”

Save Lives
By Following the Plan