It is in the nature of medical procedures that their failure can be more catastrophic for those concerned than the failure of other kinds of contracted services. A mislaid tile floor is not a threat in the way that a botched bypass operation is. One ethical issue raised by medical errors concerns scarce resources: if an organ transplant fails due to the physicians' errors, must the would-be recipient receive the same or higher priority for further transplants? If so, this may run counter to rules about the likelihood of success, for a failed transplant may have weakened the patient. If not, then what might otherwise have been a merely serious error can become critical, or fatal. Other issues surrounding medical error include those of disclosure and liability. [See Case Studies related to Medical Error

The failure of a planned action to be completed as intended or the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim in the health care delivery process.

In the United States medical error is estimated to result in 44,000 to 98,000 unnecessary deaths and 1,000,000 excess injuries each year. It is estimated that in a typical 100 to 300 bed hospital in the United States, excess costs of $1,000,000 to $3,000,000 attributable to prolonged stays and complications just due to medication errors occur yearlBy.