Hospital safety improves at painfully slow pace

It's been more than eight years since To Err is Human detailed just how deadly hospital errors can be to patients, writes the director of the Center for Medical Consumers in this op-ed piece, but progress in changing the likelihood of a patient being harmed has been just too slow. The error epidemic is not just costly in lives lost: The economic impact is estimated to be between $17- and $29 billion dollars as a result of lost income as well as disability and healthcare costs, he writes.