In 1999, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a study entitled "To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System." Its estimate of the number of deaths and adverse outcomes caused by medical errors sent shockwaves through both the healthcare community and the general population. Perhaps for the first time, members of the healthcare community began to seriously look at the way healthcare is delivered and how the process could be improved to enhance patient safety.
Thus, one of the most beneficial results from the IOM study was that hospital workers and other healthcare providers realized that they urgently needed to fully and more effectively incorporate "risk" as a crucial component of their management.
