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Previous Volume 353:1405-1409 September 29, 2005 Number 13 Next

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More than five years ago, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued its pathbreaking report, To Err Is Human, and fundamentally changed the debate about health care quality in the United States.¹ The publication reconfigured how we think about the quality of care, attracted greater interest among payers and employers in the improvement of care and patient safety, focused attention on the need to inform patients who have been victims of iatrogenic injury, and produced a substantial increase in research support. The report recently has been characterized as the most influential health care publication in the past two decades.²

Yet at . . . [Full Text of this Article]

The Premise and Promise of Safety

Shortcomings of the Accidental-Death Construct

A Return to Effectiveness

What Can Be Done?

Source Information

From Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School (T.A.B., A.G.), and the Harvard School of Public Health (T.A.B., A.G., D.S.) — all in Boston; and the University of Texas at Houston, Houston (E.T.).

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