The Handbook of Patient Safety Compliance
Chapter One
PATIENT SAFETY
Crossing the Chasm from Legal
and Regulatory Compliance
Fay A. Rozovsky
The concept of patient safety caught mainstream attention with the publication
of To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System (Kohn, Corrigan, and
Donaldson, 2000). This Institute of Medicine (IOM) report captured worldwide
attention with the suggestion that every year, 44,000 to 98,000 Americans
lose their lives to medical error, a startling statistic. The data suggested that health
care took more lives than those lost to motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer,
AIDS, and workplace accidents. The report suggested that these deaths were due
largely to bad systems in American health care. Regulatory and market-based
strategies were offered in the IOM report, along with a goal of at least a 50 percent
reduction in medical errors over a five-year period.
Two major themes emerged in To Err Is Human: that medical error is a
systemic problem and that concerns about liability make health care systems hesitant
to report errors. Yet without such information the health care field cannot
learn effectively about mistakes and make positive changes.
Federal ag ... read full excerpt from The Handbook of Patient Safety Compliance: A Practical Guide for Health Care Organizations ebook
