(I-Newswire) July 29, 2010 - The 1999 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health Care System, found that preventable medical errors caused 44,000 to 98,000 preventable deaths each year, with an associated cost of $17 to $29 billion. Even using the conservative estimate, this placed medical errors among the leading causes of death in the U.S.