National patient safety initiatives: Moving beyond what is necessary

This is a commentary on http://www.ijhpr.org/content/1/1/19/ webciteMaking meaningful progress in advancing patient safety has become a global priority in the last decade. Key milestones were the ambitious agenda set in the U.S. by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to reduce the number of patients who were hurt or died as a result of medical errors and adverse events [1] and more recently, establishment of the World Health Organization (WHO) global patient safety initiative [2]. National initiatives and policy play a critical role for nations to meet these ambitious goals. In the U.S., in the aftermath of the IOM report, a series of initiatives were launched including setting up federal patient safety organizations that have set goals and guidelines, engaging accrediting organizations to include patient safety programs for providers, funding for new research on patient safety and liability reforms that allowed providers to report safety events.In Ilan and Donchin's report published in this issue of The Israel Journal of Health Policy Research the authors focus on the experience of two countries in setting a national patient safety agenda - Canada and Israel [3]. In the last decade, Canada has followed the U.S. and put in place a plan with ambitious goals aimed at significantly advancing the safety of patients, Israel has yet to set a formal national agenda and has pushed patient safety forward mainly through local initiatives and centers of excellence.Ilan and Donchin go on to suggest what steps should be taken at the national level in Israel to establish an organized patient safety agenda. As immediate steps they stress the importance of establishing an organizational infrastructure starting from the national level and continuing with the major health care provider organizations, promoting research on patient safety through allocation of appropriate support for this work and emphasizing education of patient safety as a core curriculum component for health care profes