That report said that an estimated 44,000 to 98,000 people die each year as a result of medical mistakes. Medication errors have been found to be the single most common type of medical errors in healthcare facilities. For health systems that regard safety as a problem only for other facilities, Luther Midelfort CEO William Rupp, MD, has some advice. There are almost certainly quality issues out there that you don't know about or understand well. He speaks from experience.
Nobody believes their organization is unsafe.
Three years ago we didn't consider patient safety a problem. We knew that errors occurred, but we didn't think there was a major problem because there were very few incident reports. We thought we were doing a good job. The results of initial chart reviews were stunning. For each 100 admissions to one of the medical units, for example, about 230 medication errors occurred.