More than 2,000 hospitals nationwide have signed on to what has been dubbed the "100,000 Lives Campaign." Backers of the campaign aim to prevent 100,000 needless deaths that occur in the nation’s hospitals by June 14, 2006, by getting at least 1,600 hospitals to agree to make changes in several key areas. The effort is one of several quality-improvement projects launched since the Institute of Medicine reported in 1999 that 98,000 people die needlessly in the nation’s hospitals each year because of medical errors.