Improving reliability of care: The Danish Safer Hospital Programme

Improving the quality and safety in health care can not be based on the development of new technology, new techniques and new drugs only. The existence of “the quality chasm” is a reality: there is a gap between what we are able to do, and the degree to which we actually adhere to the evidence-based elements of care [1] . This is important for achieving a reliable delivery of care. To bridge the quality chasm we must do what we have to do—not only some of it for the majority of the patients most of the time, but all of it for every patient all the time. It has been shown that implementation of evidence based standards of care trails an average of 17 years behind the time of general acceptance of the standards as best clinical practice [2] . Improving the reliability of our care system by closing this gap is a key challenge we have to deal with.