It has been just over a decade since the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued To Err Is Human, the landmark report that vividly documented the scope of patient safety problems within the U.S. health care system. A series of Commonwealth Fund case studies released on the fifth anniversary of that report highlighted health care organizations that had taken promising steps toward creating an organizational culture of safety—one of the IOM's key recommendations. In a follow-up to that earlier series, The Commonwealth Fund released a new set of case studies exploring the progress made by four of these early leaders:
- Johns Hopkins Medicine, an academic medical center and nonprofit integrated health care system in Maryland that set a goal in 2002 of making its care the safest in the world.
- Sentara Healthcare, an integrated system serving parts of Virginia and North Carolina that developed a program to foster a culture of safety throughout its member hospitals.
- OSF HealthCare, a system based in Illinois and Michigan that has promoted a collaborative approach to ensuring patient safety.
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which formed the National Center for Patient Safety to instill an organizational culture of safety in its nationwide network of hospitals and clinics.
