ECRI: Top 10 patient safety concerns 2026

Summary

ECRI's 2026 Top 10 reflects a shift toward broad, systemic threats that jeopardise safe, equitable and reliable care. This year’s list emphasises risks that span technology, infrastructure, staffing, culture, and public health—issues capable of affecting large numbers of patients and driving preventable harm.

Content

This year’s number one concern—navigating the AI diagnostic dilemma—underscores how unchecked dependence on AI tools can increase diagnostic errors, perpetuate bias and erode critical thinking skills. Although AI has immense potential to improve clinical workflows and expand access to expertise, the rapidly growing use of AI in healthcare raises serious safety and governance challenges.

Several other topics highlight persistent obstacles—such as emergency department boarding and medication safety vulnerabilities in packaging and labelling design—that continue to strain the healthcare system.

A few topics featured this year include:

• Reduced access to rural healthcare increases health risks and disparities.
• Increasing rates of preventable acute diseases.
• Effects of federal funding cuts on healthcare operations and patient safety.

To effectively understand where vulnerabilities lie, leaders must examine all elements of their systems—people, organisations, tasks and processes, tools and technology and the physical environment. Each topic in this year’s Top 10 represents a failure in one or more of these interconnected areas.