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Delays and mistakes in health care for distinct patient populations hold improvement lessons for the broader system. This news story highlights problems in correctional system cancer diagnoses and treatment that may indicate other types of prison care delivery problems.

This story discusses failures related emergency psychiatric assessment, including premature discharge, implicit bias, patient management discontinuity and inappropriate physical restraint that contributed to the death of a patient at risk for suicide.

Patients with rare diseases present diagnostic challenges. This article introduces the potential for improvements in diagnosis that telemedicine brings to the process through enabling access to appropriate expertise previously limited by geography. 

Implicit biases are known to impact effective diagnosis. This story highlights how dismissed concerns resulted in a delay in cancer diagnosis that contributed to the death of a young woman. 

System weaknesses are often at the root of never events. This news story discusses the suicide of a concussed woman whose care failed due to gaps in team communication, discharge and transition practices.

Delays in emergency room (ER) triage and assessment contribute to wide range of failures that degrade patient safety. This news story highlights the findings of a government report highlighting overcrowding and production pressures as factors resulting in the death of a patient waiting for care who initially presented at the ER with symptoms of heart attack.

This magazine article reports on the preventable death of a patient during an acute asthma attack. Written by the patient's husband, the article outlines the failures that led to her death despite the fact that she was at the door of a hospital emergency department and on the phone with an emergency dispatcher. Factors discussed include overreliance on poorly functioning technology, communication failures, and lack of fail-safes.

Reporting on how misinterpretation of advance directives and living wills can detract from patient safety, this news article reveals insights from a physician who developed a checklist poster to provide decision support for clinicians and recommends standardization of the forms to reduce risks.

Exploring communication gaps and errors between nurses and physicians, this article details how safety culture, structured tools, and technology can address such concerns.

This article reports on initiatives to standardize the color designations of color-coded wristbands to avoid confusion and reduce the risk of error.

This article reports on the inconsistent use of the Department of Defense electronic medical records system and how this has led to medical errors and delays in care for US veterans.

This article discusses the weaknesses inherent in using the "five rights" for medication use as absolutes and suggests that they instead serve as broad goals to support safe medication practices.

This article reports on the investigation following the death of New York Times reporter David E. Rosenbaum. The investigation uncovered a range of failures in emergency care and is described in a report available via the link below.

In this article, an emergency medicine physician describes the work environment of emergency medical technicians and paramedics and why it is prone to error.

This article reports on a death that occurred at the Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center after a patient's deteriorating vitals signs went unnoticed.