Reducing health care hazards: lessons from the Commercial Aviation Safety Team.

Since the landmark IOM report on medical errors, the field of patient safety has frequently relied on the aviation industry as a source of learning to prevent accidents and harm in health care. This commentary explores these learnings further by highlighting the success of the Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST), a public–private enterprise voluntarily established by the aviation industry and the government in the mid-1990s. The authors, led by a pioneer in the patient safety field, propose a similar partnership in the health care community to coordinate a national agenda in improving the quality and safety of care. They call the proposed organization the Public Private Partnership to Promote Patient Safety (P5S), and provide a model for its success.