Thank you for the informative article by Carolyn M. Clancy, MD, entitled “Medication Reconciliation: Progress Realized, Challenges Ahead” (July/August, 2006). In addition to ensuring accuracy in a patient’s drug type and making dosage available at key points in the healthcare continuum, medication reconciliation also reduces the risk of medication errors.

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System. The report alleged between 44,000 and 98,000 people die unnecessarily in hospitals in the United States each year due to medical errors.

As the 109th Congress slowly draws to a close, there’s no doubt that enormous opportunities still exist for transforming healthcare with health information technology (HIT), regardless of partisan issues and politics.

On August 22, 2006, President Bush issued an executive order on “transparency of healthcare quality and pricing.”

In October, I spent a couple of days caring for a friend undergoing high-dose chemotherapy and stem cell replacement as an outpatient. My responsibilities were very simple, and in performing the most clinical of my duties — dispensing medications — I committed an error.

In October 2006, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services approved a new parent education campaign developed by the Centers of Disease Prevention & Control’s (CDC) National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities together with a broad coalition of stakeholders interested in safe neonatal healthcare.

On January 15, 2001, Justin Micalizzi, a healthy 11-year-old boy, was taken into surgery to incise and drain a swollen ankle. He was dead by 7:55 a.m. the next day, leaving behind two grieving and bewildered parents who desperately wanted to know why their son had died.

Various reports indicate that the use of barcodes for medication and patient tracking has made a minimal penetration in the critical care environment.

We appreciate this opportunity to tell you about an outstanding new resource for training healthcare providers in better teamwork practices, developed jointly by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) — TeamSTEPPS, which stands for Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety.

Several years ago while attending an executive retreat for senior hospital leadership from around the United States, my conversation with a CEO from a large southeast academic institution turned to medical errors.