• medical errors
• patient safety
• news media

The public release of healthcare performance information can easily turn into a media circus focusing on boondoggles and body counts. Michael Millenson, a former reporter with the Chicago Tribune who went on to become a health services researcher and author, reflects on the minor media storm that accompanied release of a study by the UK's National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA).

Releasing public information on medical errors is a delicate task. Context—or, more cynically, what modern public relations practitioners would call “spin”—is critical. At one extreme there is the “bad is good” approach of The Doctor's Dream, in which the 19th century British physician William Snowden Battles gave this tongue-in-cheek confession of his shortcomings:

And thus I dreamt that round me stood The victims of disease The patients I had failed to cure Though some had paid my fees. One said, “It is a happy place, My bliss is unalloyed; Through your mistakes just ten years more Of heaven I have enjoyed”.

At the other extreme is the minor media storm surrounding a study by the UK's National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) of the feasibility of a “blame free” national incident reporting system. The agency was established in July 2001 to identify adverse events and “near misses” occurring in the National Health Service (NHS) and then …