1. Bryan A. Liang, Promoting Patient Safety Through Reducing Medical Error: A Paradigm of Cooperation Between Patient, Physician, and Attorney, 24 S. ILL. U.L.J. 541, 542-43 (2000). Medical errors are distinguished for purposes of this article from intentional misdeeds, such as intentional abuse of nursing home residents by staff. See U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, NURSING HOMES: MORE CANBE DONE To PROTECT RESIDENTS FROM ABUSE, GAO-02-312 (Mar. 2002) [hereinafter MORE CAN BE DONE], available eiwww.gao.gov, then Quick Search GAO-02-312; U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, NURSING HOMES: MANY SHORTCOMINGS EXIST IN EFFORTS TO PROTECT RESIDENTS FROM ABUSE, GAO-02448T (Mar. 2002) [hereinafter MANY SHORTCOMINGS], available at www.gao.gov, then Quick Search GAO-02-448T; Diana K. Harris & Michael L. Benson, Theft in Nursing Homes: An Overlooked Form of Elder Abuse, 11 J. ELDER ABUSE & NEGLECT 73 (1999). Senator John Breaux, former chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Aging, proposed on May 20, 2002 an "Elder Justice Proposal" (available at http://aging.senate.gov) that, among other things, would require federally funded nursing homes to immediately report any crime victimizing a resident to a designated law enforcement agency.
2. See Saul N. Weingart et al., A Physician-Based Voluntary Reporting System for Adverse Events and Medical Errors, 16 J. GEN. INTERN. MED. 809 (2001) ("Incident reporting systems are in widespread use, but miss many events and usually have poor physician participation. Currently, few physicians use the voluntary error reporting systems in place in health care."); James P. Bagian et al., Developing and Deploying a Patient Safety Program In a Large Health Care System: You Can't Fix What You Don't Know About, 27 J. QUAL. IMPROV. 522 (2001).
3. "Nursing homes" are defined by the National Center for Health Statistics as facilities with three or more beds that routinely provide nursing care services. GOOLOO S. WUNDERLICH & PETER O. KOHLER, IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF LONG-TERM CARE 42 (2001)." For a concise history of the development of the nursing home as an institution in the United States, see David A. Bohm, Striving for Quality Care in America 's Nursing Homes: Tracing the History of Nursing Homes and Noting the Effect of Recent Federal Government Initiatives to Ensure Quality Care in the Nursing Home Setting, 4 DEPAUL J. HEALTH CARE L. 317, 324-31 (2001 ).
4. NATIONAL CENTER FOR HEALTH STATISTICS, AN OVERVIEW OF NURSING HOMES AND THEIR CURRENT RESIDENTS: DATA FROM THE 1995 NATIONAL NURSING HOME SURVEY (1995). See Genevieve W. Strahan, Advance Data from Vital and Health Statistics (No. 280, Hyattsville, MD, NCHS/CDC, Department of Health and Human Services 1997).
5. WILLIAM D. SPECTOR ET AL., THE CHARACTERISTICS OF LONG-TERM CARE USERS, AHRQ Pub. No. 00-0049, at 9 (Sept. 2000).