Well, I think that's right. And to the degree that some of those mistakes come from faulty miscommunication, I suspect that those errors may increase as we attempt to control costs. Well, Dr. Leape, why don't you take it from there. Well, I think Dr. Bosk raises important questions. When we've studied it, we found that error reduction activities usually pay.
People tend to underestimate how costly mistakes are.
One of the reasons is that many of those costs are hidden. Patients bear the cost. Now, that same hospital, in which that study was done, put in a computerized physician order system that cost several million dollars to develop, and yet by reducing the adverse drug effects by over 50 percent, they recouped that money in less than two years. So I think there's no question that some safety measures are going to cost money. But many of them will save money, and many of them would cost very little.