---
title: "Patient safety"
chunk: 10/10
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_safety"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:26:13.019610+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

===== Medical error =====
Ethical standards of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the American Medical Association (AMA) Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, and the American College of Physicians Ethics Manual require disclosure of the most serious adverse events. However, many doctors and hospitals do not report errors under the current system because of concerns about malpractice lawsuits; this prevents collection of information needed to find and correct the conditions that lead to mistakes. As of 2008, 35 US states have statutes allowing doctors and health care providers to apologize and offer expressions of regret without their words being used against them in court, and 7 states have also passed laws mandating written disclosure of adverse events and bad outcomes to patients and families. In September 2005, US Senators Clinton and Obama introduced the National Medical Error Disclosure and Compensation (MEDiC) Bill, providing physicians protection from liability and a safe environment for disclosure, as part of a program to notify and compensate patients harmed by medical errors. It is now the policy of several academic medical centers, including Johns Hopkins, University of Illinois and Stanford, to promptly disclose medical errors, offering apologies and compensation. This national initiative, hoping to restore integrity to dealings with patients, make it easier to learn from mistakes, and avoid angry lawsuits, was modeled after a University of Michigan Hospital System program that has reduced the number of lawsuits against the hospital by 75% and has decreased the average litigation cost. The Veterans Health Administration requires the disclosure of all adverse events to patients, even those that are not obvious. However, as of 2008 these initiatives have only included hospitals that are self-insured and that employ their staffs, thus limiting the number of parties involved. Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the US, after heart disease and cancer, according to research by Johns Hopkins University. Their study published in May 2016 concludes that more than 250,000 people die every year due to medical mix-ups. Other countries report similar results.

===== Performance =====
In April 2008, consumer, employer, and labor organizations announced an agreement with major physician organizations and health insurers on principles to measure and report doctors' performance on quality and cost.

==== United Kingdom ====
In the United Kingdom, whistleblowing is well recognized and is government-sanctioned, as a way to protect patients by encouraging employees to call attention to deficient services. Health authorities are encouraged to put local policies in place to protect whistleblowers.

== Studies of patient safety ==
Numerous organizations, government branches, and private companies conduct research studies to investigate the overall health of patient safety in America and across the globe. Despite the shocking and widely publicized statistics on preventable deaths due to medical errors in America's hospitals, the 2006 National Healthcare Quality Report assembled by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) had the following sobering assessment:
Most measures of quality are improving, but the pace of change remains modest.
Quality improvement varies by setting and phase of care.
The rate of improvement accelerated for some measures while a few continued to show deterioration.
Variation in health care quality remains high.
A 2011 study of more than 1,000 patients with advanced colon cancer found that one in eight were treated with at least one drug regimen with specific recommendations against its use in the National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines. The study focused on three chemotherapy regimens that were not supported by evidence from prior clinical studies or clinical practice guidelines. One treatment was rated "insufficient data to support", one had been "shown to be ineffective", and one was supported by "no data, nor is there a compelling rationale." Many of the patients received multiple cycles of non-beneficial chemotherapy, and some received two or more unproven treatments. Potential side effects of the treatments included hypertension, heightened risk of bleeding and bowel perforation.

== Organizations advocating patient safety ==

Several authors of the 1999 Institute of Medicine report revisited the status of their recommendations and the state of patient safety, five years after "To Err is Human". Discovering that patient safety had become a frequent topic for journalists, health care experts, and the public, it was harder to see overall improvements on a national level. What was noteworthy was the impact on attitudes and organizations. Few healthcare professionals now doubt that preventable medical injuries are a serious problem. The central concept of the report—that bad systems and not bad people lead to most errors—became established in patients' safety efforts. A broad array of organizations now advances the cause of patient safety. For instance, in 2010 the principal European anaesthesiology organizations launched the Helsinki Declaration for Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology, which incorporates many of the principles described above.

== See also ==

== References ==

== External links ==

CIMIT Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology - Nonprofit organizations together advocating for Patient safety
Institute for safety in Office Based Surgery
Center for the Advancement of Healthcare Quality & Safety (CAHQS)
Safe communication video for the prevention of healthcare-induced harm
Health-EU Portal Patient Safety in the EU
Academic Center for Evidence-Based Practice (ACE)
Improvement Science Research Network (ISRN)
Beyond The Checklist: What Else Healthcare Can Learn From Aviation Teamwork and Safety
Institute of Medicine & Law