U.S. hospitals have committed 17 percent fewer medical errors in 2013 than they did in 2010, government health officials said on Tuesday, according an article in Reuters.

This amounts to about 50,000 people who are actually alive due to declining rates of hospital failure.

Sylvia Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human Services, is scheduled to announce the corresponding data about the lowered number of medical errors on Tuesday at the CMS Healthcare Quality Conference in Baltimore.

The information is based on a detailed analysis of tens of thousands of medical records, that unfortunately, because the data was collected differently before 2010, will not be able to be tested against the pre-2010 figures.

The life threatening problem of hospital error sprang upon the national consciousness in 1999, when the Institute of Medicine estimated that as many as 98,000 men and women die every year due to hospital mistakes that allow patients to contract infections, fall, develop pneumonia from being on a ventilator, or suffer other serious, but otherwise preventable, medical mistakes.

In 2010, the HHS inspector general estimated that poor care in hospitals contributed to the deaths of 180,000 patients who were covered by Medicare. Egged on by changes in how Medicare reimbursed them, hospitals have made a concerted effort to improve safety over the last few years.

President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law requires the CMS to reduce the reimbursement rate for hospitals that re-admit too many patients within 30 days, an action that is seen as an indication of poor initial hospital care.

Dr. Patrick Conway, CMS Deputy Administrator, explained to reporters that as a result of the improvements in hospital safety, 1.3 million fewer patients suffered a hospital-acquired condition in 2013 than if the 2010 rate had remained steady.

This improvement saves some $12 billion in avoidable costs, Conway says, which is welcomed news for patients and their families and represents an "unprecedented decline in patient harm in this country."