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In April 2009, Japan Council for Quality Health Care (JCQHC) launched the Project to Collect Incidents within Community Pharmacies, a national project of self-and-voluntary reporting of incidents among community pharmacies. While there have been several studies and projects to collect and analyze incident reports among a set number of community pharmacies across the globe, it is still rare for an incident collecting project to exist at a national level. This paper introduces the new project in Japan. A retrospective analysis of community pharmacy participation across the country and cause of reported incidents based on the data released by JCQHC. Among the total number of reported incidents (1,460 cases), the most frequently reported incidents were related to the task of filling out prescriptions (92.0%). The most frequently answered cause of the incident was due to a "failure to check thoroughly" with 1,293 (96.3) out of 1,343 reported cases of incidents from community pharmacies. In a comparison of incidents reported between hospital pharmacies and community hospitals, both types of pharmacies reported a "failure to check thoroughly" as the leading cause of incidents. In hospital pharmacies, however, only 3,265 (84.7%) cases out of 3,857 were reported with "failure to check thoroughly" as the cause of incident. The rates between hospital pharmacy and community pharmacy for this cause differed significantly (P < 0.05). As the main cause of incidents was due to "the failure to check thoroughly", the need for confirmation systems within community pharmacies has become ever more evident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]