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Rebecca Voelker

JAMA. 2001;286:3067-3069.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

After the Institute of Medicine (IOM) jolted the US health care industry in 1999 with a report that indicated as many as 98 000 people die each year from medical errors, a dizzying array of new patient safety programs cropped up around the country. New task forces, patient safety standards, and training programs emerged from national organizations including the American Hospital Association, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, and the US Department of Health and Human Services.

"The problem that many hospitals and physicians face now is that there are huge amounts of information available. That much material can be negative in the sense that people just don't know where to start," says Thomas McCarter, MD, vice president of medical affairs for Tenet HealthSystem's Pennsylvania region.

Photographs of health care professionals help personalize the patient safety message. (Credit: ECRI, Health Care Improvement Foundation of the Delaware Valley . . . [Full Text of this Article]