Thanks to the proliferation of crime procedural TV shows, most Americans understand the value of autopsies in identifying a catalog of biological factors that add up to being able to nab the perp. But in hospitals, medical mistakes are being buried without autopsies, and that's a problem for safe, high quality medical care.

A recent report from ProPublica, Frontline and NPR makes clear that the autopsy, a valuable tool in posthumous diagnosis, is increasingly ignored.

In the middle of the last century, according to the report, autopsies were an integral part of American health care. They were performed on approximately half of all patients who died in hospitals to pinpoint the cause of death, to assess how effective were the treatments and to identify diagnostic errors. Today, only about 5 in 100 patients who die in hospitals are autopsied. Hospitals are not required to offer or perform autopsies.