A wide variety of research studies suggest that breakdowns in the diagnostic process result in a staggering toll of harm and patient deaths. These include autopsy studies, case reviews, surveys of ...

Objective To contextualise the degree of harm that comes from unsafe medical care compared with individual health conditions using the global burden of disease (GBD), a metric to determine how much ...

Correspondence to Dr Jeffrey L Schnipper, Division of General Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Department of Medicine, Boston, MA 02115-6110, USA; jschnipper ...

Background Tools that proactively identify factors that contribute to accidents have been developed within high-risk industries. Although patients provide feedback on their experience of care in ...

Correspondence to Dr Ian Leistikow, Medical Specialist Care, Dutch Healthcare Inspectorate, PO Box 2518, 6401DA Heerlen, The Netherlands; ip.leistikow{at}igz.nl The purpose of these systems is also ...

Correspondence to Dr Hardeep Singh, Houston VA HSR&D Center of Excellence, Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the Section of Health Services Research, Department of Medicine, ...

1 Department of Health Sciences, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK 2 NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK Correspondence to: Dr S Gilbody Senior Lecturer ...

Background Hospital incident reporting and patient concerns systems are widely used to detect and respond to patient harm.

Correspondence to: Dr M A Mohammed Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK; m.a.mohammedbham.ac.uk Continuous improvement in health care and ...

If the core aim of a healthcare system is to minimise both illness and treatment burden while reducing the costs of care delivery, then we must accept, however reluctantly, that our efforts are ...

Correspondence to Professor Rachel Ann Elliott, Manchester Centre for Health Economics, School of Health Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK; ...

2 Professor of General Practice, Department of General Practice, University of Antwerp, Universiteitsplein 1, 2610 Antwerp, Belgium 3 Professor of Quality in Health Care, Clinical Governance Research ...