Is it really 250k in health care errors? How does this break down in terms of misdiagnosis, surgical errors, malpractice, etc? Seems like quite a lot but spread out over the population maybe not.
You can
read the Johns Hopkins report for yourself, but the short answer is that the relative proportions of the different kinds of errors listed below are unknown because death certificates do not code them and hospitals do not release the information. Note also that the 250K/yr is for hospital inpatient deaths only -- outpatient, nursing home, etc. deaths due to medical error are omitted.
Here's an excerpt from the report (highlights are mine):
The annual list of the most common causes of death in the United States, compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), informs public awareness and national research priorities each year. The list is created using death certificates filled out by physicians, funeral directors, medical examiners, and coroners. However,
a major limitation of the death certificate is that it relies on assigning an International Classification of Disease (ICD) code to the cause of death. As a result, causes of death not associated with an ICD code, such as human and system factors, are not captured.
...
Medical error has been defined as an unintended act (either of omission or commission) or one that does not achieve its intended outcome, the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended (an error of execution), the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim (an error of planning), or a deviation from the process of care that may or may not cause harm to the patient. Patient harm from medical error can occur at the individual or system level. The taxonomy of errors is expanding to better categorize preventable factors and events. We focus on preventable lethal events to highlight the scale of potential for improvement. The role of error can be complex. While many errors are non-consequential, an error can end the life of someone with a long life expectancy or accelerate an imminent death. The case in the box shows how error can contribute to death. Moving away from a requirement that only reasons for death with an ICD code can be used on death certificates could better inform healthcare research and awareness priorities.
Case history: role of medical error in patient death. A young woman recovered well after a successful transplant operation. However, she was readmitted for non-specific complaints that were evaluated with extensive tests, some of which were unnecessary, including a pericardiocentesis. She was discharged but came back to the hospital days later with intra-abdominal hemorrhage and cardiopulmonary arrest.
An autopsy revealed that the needle inserted during the pericardiocentesis grazed the liver causing a pseudoaneurysm that resulted in subsequent rupture and death. The death certificate listed the cause of death as cardiovascular. 
Gillibrand started out saying she was pro- 2A. That went away in her first challenge election and now she is trying to out-Cuomo Andrew!
