Staffing excellence: moving from retrospective to prospective management of risk.

Our complex health care system will not be error free for the foreseeable future. Certain interventions must be put into place to manage that risk, and staffing effectiveness is a critical part of clinical risk management. Application of research and practice can create a basis for a proactive risk management plan, and will build in an essential feedback loop to leadership. Pay for performance initiatives by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and other payers are creating further incentive to get to zero errors faster. By implementing what we know about staffing and avoidable errors, we are in a very good position to meet the challenges to create a safe health care system.