Patient safety: the challenges and opportunities for the ESRD program

The Institute of Medicine's report, issued December 1999, entitled "To Err is Human; Building a Safer System," describes the magnitude of the problem of errors in medicine and carts an agenda for improving patient safety. The essential features include establishing patient safety as a national focus, identifying and learning from errors, passing legislation to protect reporting, and adopting the patient safety sciences. The presidential report of February 2000, issued by the Quality Interagency Task Force (QuIC), formulates a federal government response across all federal agencies. The challenges and opportunities facing the end-stage renal disease (ESRD) Program and the ESRD Network Organizations include taking a leadership role, raising awareness, conducting educational programs, and facilitating making errors visible, for the purposes of learning and improvement.