Footnotes

• Contributors All authors made substantial contributions to this manuscript including drafting the manuscript and revising it critically. All authors approved the manuscript version being submitted for publication.

• Competing interests Dr. Wachter reports that he is a member of the Lucian Leape Institute of the National Patient Safety Foundation (for which he receives no compensation); has previously served as a member of the ABIM Foundation board (for which he received a stipend); has a contract to UCSF from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to edit a patient-safety website; receives compensation from John Wiley and Sons for writing a blog; receives royalties from Lippincott Williams & Wilkins and McGraw-Hill for writing/editing several books; received a stipend and stock/options for having previously served on the Board of Directors of IPC Healthcare; serves on the scientific advisory boards for Amino.com, PatientSafe Solutions, QPID Health, Twine, and EarlySense (for which he receives stock options); and holds the Benioff endowed chair in hospital medicine from Marc and Lynne Benioff.

• Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.