Today's Journal cover story, "Probing Tools," takes aim at a slice of a complex issue: How federal and state regulators are working to reduce the incidence of medical errors, especially those that could affect health or safety of patients or medical staff.

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Here is the story at a glance. Pick up the paper for the rest.

St. Joseph Hospital is trying to get Medicare to rescind its threat to terminate federal payments to the hospital because of "systemic" infection control flaws.

Public health inspectors have made multiple visits to the hospital since an inspection report dated Sept. 16 cited one known case of a contaminated endoscope being put down a patient's throat and the "possibility that 33 other procedures were performed with contaminated endoscopes" between November 2009 and September 2010.

Hospital officials said no patients were harmed by what they described as procedural errors with low infection risk. It could be months before state and federal officials finish their review of hospital systems.

~ Tom Abate