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Reducing the rate of medical errors in the United States.

Medical errors cost tens of thousands of lives in US hospitals each year—more than deaths from highway accidents, breast cancer, and AIDS combined. Studies have put the numbers of deaths anywhere from 44 000 to 98 000 annually in hospitals. However, these numbers could go much higher if the numbers of people who die as a result of errors in day-surgery and outpatient clinics, retail pharmacies, nursing homes, and home care were counted, said the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in its landmark report “To Err is Human,” which was released in November.

“These stunningly high rates of medical errors—resulting in deaths, permanent disability, and unnecessary suffering—are simply unacceptable in a medical system that promises first to ‘do no harm,’” said William Richardson, chair of the committee that wrote the report and president and chief executive officer of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Mich. “Our recommendations are intended to encourage the healthcare system to take the actions necessary to improve safety. We must have a healthcare system that makes it easy to do things right and hard to do them wrong… The status quo is not acceptable and cannot be tolerated any more.”

Preventing such mistakes requires system-wide changes, the IOM committee said in its report. They …