Improving Ambulatory Patient Safety: Learning From the Last Decade, Moving Ahead in the Next

The 1999 Institute of Medicine report To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System¹ launched the modern patient safety movement by estimating a large number of yearly error-related deaths among hospitalized patients in the United States.¹ But 12 years later, there are no reliable data on how many patients in the United States are injured or die each year because of errors in ambulatory settings. The number may be substantial; 52% of paid medical malpractice claims in 2009 were for events in the outpatient setting, and two-thirds of these claims involved major injury or death.²