Your Local Hospital Is Much More Dangerous Than It Could Be

“Nobody goes to work in the morning to harm a patient,” is a health care truism. Yet a national survey of hospital patient safety culture found that 40% of respondents agreed that “hospital management seems interested in patient safety only after an adverse event happens.” Perhaps coincidentally, 43% of hospitals earned a “C,” “D” or “F” grade in the latest report from the Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit that publishes patient safety report cards on individual hospitals.

The challenge with regard to patient harm is changing from a culture that sees “inevitability” to one that is passionate about “preventability.”