According to a 1999 Institute of Medicine report, as many as 98,000 American die each year as a result of medical errors--a figure higher than deaths due to motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. And that figure does not even include those medical harms that are serious but nonfatal. What can be done about this? How can patients, and their families, regain a sense of trust in American's health care system? Where do we even begin the discussion? This book analyzes the profound problem of patient safety reform, and includes an impressive group of scholars and health care practitioners from such disciplines as medical history, sociology, economics, health care purchasing, health policy, law, philosophy, and theology. These contributors analyze the Institute of Medicine report--which contains the most comprehensive set of public policy recommendations on medical error and patient safety in the history of the United States--and point out possibilities as well as obstacles. Underlying all public policy deliberations are specific social values and assumptions about how these values should be weighed and balanced or prioritized. In order to understand and assess the legitimacy of proposed policies in a democratic society, these underlying values and assumptions must be made explicit and subject to critical appraisal. This is the task of this book--an attempt to provide the framework for such deliberations.