The rapid growth in literature on patient safety and quality improvement has been accompanied by controversy about how such studies should be conducted and reported. Influential leaders have argued that quality improvement (QI) studies demand a different standard of evaluation than traditional biomedical research, given their complexity. A contrary argument notes that failure to rigorously evaluate such research could result in wasted resources and unanticipated consequences if poorly evaluated interventions are widely implemented. Developed by expert consensus, these guidelines provide a blueprint for reporting the results of QI studies. The authors advocate that authors and journal editors use the guidelines to standardize reporting of safety and QI studies. A detailed approach to planning and measuring safety studies was described in a recent series.