Human reliability issues in medical care ~ a customer viewpoint

Many errors occur in medical practice due to the lack of significant preventive methodologies. The presence of significant numbers of errors has been reported on in professional journals, as well as the popular press. Significant improvement in medical care may be possible through the application of error proofing methods from other disciplines including reliability and quality as applied in manufacturing, defense, and high tech hardware and software design. This has started to occur in several regions of the United States including Pittsburgh, PA. The institution of systematic policies, procedures, checklists, etc. has the capability of dramatic improvements in human error rates