A target to achieve zero preventable trauma deaths through quality improvement.
Determining which harms are truly preventable remains an ongoing challenge in the field of patient safety. In a 2016 report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine called for achieving zero preventable trauma deaths, but the actual number of preventable trauma deaths in the United States remains unknown. Analyzing administrative data from more than 18 million patients across 2198 hospitals, investigators determined that if low-performing hospitals could provide the same quality of trauma care as high-performing centers, 100,000 lives could be saved over a 5-year period.