In the seven years since the Institute of Medicine's report "To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System" much has been said about the types of errors prevalent in healthcare and ways of reducing these errors.

While some progress has been made, one aspect of medical errors has garnered little attention. Specifically, there is a disincentive to report errors.

If we lived in a world in which physicians were simply servants of their patients, the only question going forward would be how to reduce medical errors. But in the real world we must ask in addition how to decouple error reporting from financial and professional risk to healthcare providers.

Discuss this article on the forums. (0 posts)