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Quality Control, Enterprise Liability, and Disintermediation in Managed Care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

John V. Jacobi  and
Nicole Huberfeld
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Extract

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has returned the problem of medical error to the top of the health-care agenda. Its report that 44,000 to 98,000 patients die each year as a result of medical errors in American hospitals has renewed scholarly interest in health system quality control. In To Err Is Human, the IOM provides a vivid picture of a health-care system riven with serious quality problems. It calls for systems-based error-reduction methods borrowed from other high-risk industries and forcefully argues against the traditional tendency to assign accountability primarily to individual physicians. Most errors, the IOM argues, can be successfully addressed by engineering systemic fail-safe protections against the inevitable failings of human actors.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 29 , Issue 3-4 , Fall Winter 2001 , pp. 305 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2001

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References

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