In recent years, quality and safety in patient healthcare has become an important professional and academic field, involving practical scientific research with far-reaching implications in the areas of organization of the workplace, medical education and legislation. The Committee for Clinical Quality and Error Prevention serves as a quality control unit as defined in the Patients’ Rights Law. The committee's principal function is to encourage and initiate measurement of clinical quality parameters in hospital departments, under the supervision of the department chairman; with the cooperation of doctors and nurses as well as medical, public health, pharmacy and nursing students (as a final paper or thesis project). The committee's long-term goal is to alter the organizational culture, leading to the routine measuring of quality indicators.
The Center for Clinical Quality and Safety was established to assist the committee in its endeavors, due to the large backlog of projects. The Center was asked to develop new methods for evaluating and improving clinical performance, using instruments of industrial (of the statistical-process-control type), communication and organizational psychology.