We could cut 180,000 preventable hospital deaths a year. Here’s exactly why we haven’t

Joe Kiani is the Founder of Masimo Corp. Willow Laboratories, and Citizex and is the co-founder of Coresee, A Starting Point and Like Minded Entertainment. Joe also serves on several Boards, including Clairity, Rady’s Children Hospital, Scripps Research and SMS Biotech.

Anders Pederson died trying to save his sister.

From the time Kelly was a toddler, Anders was her protector. When she was just 15 months old, a serious illness damaged her kidneys. Doctors warned the family that one day she might need a transplant. Decades later, when Kelly turned 30 and her kidneys began to fail, Anders didn’t hesitate, he immediately volunteered to donate one of his.

The surgery was successful.

The next morning, Anders visited Kelly and told her donating his kidney had been the best day of his life. But hours later, he began experiencing severe pain and vomiting. His pain medication was changed, and warning signs went unnoticed. When his mother returned to check on him, Anders’ hand was cold, his lips were blue, and he wasn’t breathing.

Anders fell into a coma and died nine days later. The family was initially told his heart had simply stopped. Only after pushing for answers did they learn the truth: a cascade of preventable failures, inadequate monitoring and medication management, had taken the life of a healthy young man who had just saved his sister.

Stories like Anders’ are not rare tragedies. They are symptoms of a systemic failure. And the most maddening part? We already know exactly how to prevent them.

The number hiding in plain sight

For more than two decades, patient safety experts have warned that preventable medical harm is one of the most urgent public health crises in America. Research suggests medical errors contribute to roughly 250,000 deaths each year in the United States, placing them behind only heart disease and cancer as a cause of death. Globally, the toll may reach 3 million deaths annually.

But here is what rarely gets stated plainly: if every hospital in this country implemented all of the evidence-based practices that researchers and clinicians have already identified and validated, we could reduce that death toll from approximately 200,000 a year to as few as 20,000, a 90% reduction. Not through new drugs or breakthrough science. Through

protocols that exist today, posted on our website, available to any hospital administrator who cares to look.

That is not an aspirational goal. It is a quantifiable, achievable outcome that we are choosing, collectively, not to pursue.

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine’s landmark report To Err Is Human shocked the nation by estimating that 44,000 to 98,000 Americans were dying each year from preventable medical errors. That report was meant to ignite transformation. It promised accountability, transparency, and systemic change. By 2011, an OIG report showed we were losing 200,000 patients a year. Twenty-five years after........

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