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An estimated 1 million or more patients are harmed in America's hospitals every year. Join doctors and patient safety advocates for a discussion on accountability and spurring improvement.

by Blair Hickman ProPublica, Apr. 1, 2013, 3:20 pm

More than 1 million patients suffer harm each year while being treated in the U.S. health care system. Even more receive substandard care or costly overtreatment.

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine released a report suggesting a strategy to combat death due to preventable medical errors and set a goal of cutting preventable errors in half over the next five years.

Nearly 15 years later, several problems cited in the report are still an issue. The publicdoesntknow if deaths due to preventable errors have decreased, because noone agency tracks them (which was actually a recommendation in the report). And to complicate matters, deaths due to preventable error are just a subset of the problem: an estimated 1 million people or more are harmed in the hospital every year, from infections to injuries to surgical mistakes.

So why does the patient harm problem persist? Is it bad systems, or are individuals also responsible? And how can health care providers and the public promote accountability? Join ProPublica for a discussion this Friday, April 5, at 1 PM ET with Dr. Marty Makaryof Johns Hopkins, SorryWorks! founder Doug Wojcieszak, UCLAs Dr. Clifford Ko and health care journalist Marshall Allen.

You can tweet questions for our panel in advance with the hashtag #MedErrorsChat, or leave them in the comments below.

As social media producer, Blair Hickman leads ProPublica's health care, financial and education communities.

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Discussion: How to Improve Accountability in Medicine ?