Topic
Quality and Patient Safety
Patients must rely on health care professionals and institutions for their safety and well-being. The IOM focuses on patient safety in order to promote policies and best practices that create safe and high-quality health care environments.
Reports Related to Quality and Patient Safety
Report Releases
Latest Report
Released: November 14, 2011
Nearly half of all American adults lack health literacy – an individual’s ability to obtain, process, and understand basic health information. In order to improve knowledge among these 90 million people, the IOM, along with the UCLA Anderson School of Management, held a workshop on November 30, 2010, to explore ways in which state-based organizations and individuals can work to improve health literacy.
Most Viewed Report
Released: July 20, 2006
According to one estimate, in any given week four out of every five U.S. adults will use prescription medicines, over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, or dietary supplements of some sort. Most of the time these medications are beneficial, but on occasion they do injure the person taking them. Sometimes the harm is caused by an error in prescribing or taking the medication, and these damages are not inevitable. Preventing Medication Errors puts forward a national agenda for reducing medication errors based on estimates of the incidence and cost of such errors and evidence on the efficacy of various prevention strategies.
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