With medical errors persisting, why aren’t cost-effective safety and quality solutions gaining more traction?

Becker's Healthcare December 31, 2019
Melanie C. Dreher, Patricia Quigley, Catherine Rick and Marla J. Weston

More than 20 years after the publication of the Institute of Medicine’s seminal report “To Err is Human” — which sought to cut preventable medical mistakes by half — progress toward safer care has been slow. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reports that public and private efforts reduced hospital-acquired conditions by 13 percent from 2014-17, helping to prevent more than 20,000 deaths and saving $7.7 billion in healthcare costs. That’s welcome news, but given that there are as many as 400,000 preventable deaths from medical mistakes each year, we wonder why more health systems aren’t rushing to implement proven safety and quality solutions.

Health policy experts have warned for far too long that healthcare must adopt systemic safety...

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