Medical mistakes happen and are very common, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were 250,000 per year. But "wrong site surgery" is a tiny subset of medical e

Medical mistakes happen and are very common, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were 250,000 per year. But "wrong site surgery" is a tiny subset of medical error, and I'd be amazed if that was more than 1000 per year. Most medical error is in the form of medication error. Medication error is very common, and I'd be surprised if it was as low as 250,000 per year. I'd guess that number was the number of people harmed by a medication error. These errors are serious and we need to work to stop them, but we also need to put them into context. There are over 800 million physician office visits in the US per year. There are over 140 million ED visits per year.