The New England Journal of Medicine had just published a study of medical mistakes. It showed that for every thousand people admitted to a hospital in the United States, three would die from error. The Veterans Health Administration treated a quarter of a million Americans a day: it was the second-largest provider of medical care in the world, behind the UK’s National Health Service. The entire scandal could have been a statistical artifact: in such a vast system, there were bound to be, as a matter of pure chance, clusters of error. He also knew that the VA surgeons were doing their best; and
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