Heartland Regional Medical Center makes a "fitting response" to medical mistakes.

Medical mistakes is an issue that challenges many healthcare providers and organizations. The challenges are professional, personal, systemswide, financial, and morally compelling; and a fully fitting response may depend on the answer to questions that H. Richard Niebuhr used to divide all ethical considerations: what is going on here; and what is the fitting response. Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph, Missouri, asked these questions about medication errors. The response model they developed, although it is very much a work in progress, shows how a facility can go from an ethical analysis to fixing the problem.