[17][18][19] Over the past decades, internal medicine residency programs across North America have made efforts to incorporate more ambulatory training to the medical education curriculum.
[6][24][25] For Medicaid-covered and uninsured U.S. hospital stays in 2012, six of the top ten diagnoses were ambulatory care sensitive conditions.
[36][37] Some of the common potential sources of harm include errors to medications and diagnostics as well as breakdowns in communications and coordination of care.
[38] One major complication of ambulatory care that predisposes to patients to harm is the risk for missing appointments.
[38] Some have raised the notion of designing health professionals payment policies with greater focus on safety in addition to patient volumes.