MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Charlotte Yeh MD FACEP Chief Medical Officer AARP Services, Inc Dr. Charlotte Yeh is the Chief Medical Officer for AARP Services, Inc . In her role, Dr. Yeh works with the independent carriers that make health-related products and services available to AARP members, to identify programs and initiatives that will lead to enhanced care for older adults. Dr. Yeh has more than 30 years of healthcare experience – as a practitioner and Chief of Emergency Medicine at Newton-Wellesley Hospital and Tufts Medical Center, as the Medical Director for the National Heritage Insurance Company, a Medicare Part B claims contractor, and as the Regional Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Boston. In this interview, Dr. Yeh comments on the September 2016 AARP Bulletin feature that focuses on twelve common health care blunders and how they can be avoided. MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this report? How big is the problem of medical errors? Dr. Yeh: Medical errors first became widely acknowledged in 1999 with the publication of the landmark study by the National Academy of Sciences (IOM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IOM), estimating as many as 98,000 hospital in-patient deaths per year were caused by medical errors. More recently, a study from Johns Hopkins noted that medical errors may claim as many as 251,000 lives per year. (more…)