Good progress, but work remains

Here's a superb article by Helen Haskell on the AHRQ site.  It provides a compelling retrospective of the patient safety movement in the US, from 1981 to the present.

Her conclusion is right on target, in my view:

It should be axiomatic that without safe and effective health care, other reforms have little meaning. Yet despite decades of work by patient safety advocates, both inside and outside the health care system, our systems are still far from safe. The topic preoccupying this patient safety advocate is that in the rush toward inclusiveness, population health, and integrated care, the vital unfinished business of safety may be pushed to the margins.