The medical service body reported in Berlin that, in 2025, it created a total of 11,735 expert medical opinions nationwide regarding suspected medical errors.
In these reviews, the experts determined that a medical error resulting in damage was found in one out of every four cases (3,098 cases). Furthermore, in 2,700 instances, the error was proven to be the cause of the suffered damage. Most severely, the error led to death or significantly contributed to it in 97 cases. However, these figures only represent a small fraction of the actual instances of error, with a high degree of unreported incidents expected.
Scientific research estimates that avoidable adverse events occur in about two to four percent of inpatient treatments. When scaled up to Germany, this equates to approximately 350,000 to 700,000 events per year. The text notes that uncertain healthcare provision not only causes unnecessary human suffering but also generates substantial costs.
The OECD estimates that approximately 15 percent of costs for inpatient care in highly developed countries are incurred due to the consequences of avoidable adverse events. Applying this estimate to the hospital expenditure of statutory health insurance in Germany for 2025 yields an estimated cost of around 16.7 billion euros.
Stefan Gronemeyer, the Chairman of the Medical Service Body, stated that improving patient safety is also a matter of healthcare economy. He added, “Every avoidable injury we prevent means less suffering and simultaneously avoids unnecessary follow-up costs.”
In the 2025 annual statistics, the experts classified 150 cases (up from 134 in 2024) as “Never Events.” These include severe medication errors, unwanted foreign objects left in the body after surgery (such as swabs), and patient mix-ups that can lead to serious harm.
Of all the reported allegations of medical error, two-thirds (7,633 cases) pertain to inpatient care, primarily in hospitals, while one-third (4,073 cases) relate to outpatient services.
When analyzing specific fields of medicine, the data shows that 29.6 percent of the allegations (3,476 cases) involve orthopedics and trauma surgery; 10.6 percent involve internal and general medicine (1,246 cases); 9.4 percent involve obstetrics and gynecology (1,099 cases); 8.9 percent involve dentistry (1,043 cases); and 8.2 percent involve general and visceral surgery (961 cases). Furthermore, 6.6 percent of the allegations concerned nursing care (776 cases), and 26.7 percent were distributed across 29 other specialized fields (3,134 cases).
The 2025 annual statistics recorded 11,735 suspected cases across nearly 1,000 different diagnoses, covering faulty treatments for conditions such as hip and knee joint wear, bone fractures, gallstones, and dental root treatments, among many others.
