the coding system used by CDC to record death certificate data doesn't capture things like communication breakdowns, diagnostic errors and poor judgment that cost lives, the study says."You have this overappreciation and overestimate of things like cardiovascular disease, and a vast underrecognition of the place of medical care as the cause of death," Makary said in an interview. "That informs all our national health priorities and our research grants."The analysis was published Tuesday in The BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal.Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch for the CDC, disputed that the agency's coding is the problem. He said complications from medical care are listed on death certificates and that codes do capture them.The CDC's published mortality statistics, however, count only the "underlying cause of death," defined as the condition that led a person to seek treatment. As a result, even if a doctor does list medical errors on a death certificate, they aren't included in the published totals. Only the underlying condition, such as heart disease or cancer, is counted, even when it isn't fatal.Anderson said the CDC's approach is consistent with international guidelines, allowing U.S. death statistics to be compared with those of other countries. As such, it would be difficult to change "unless we had a really compelling reason to do so," Anderson said.