Tucked amid the precise language of someone schooled in the subtleties of health care policy is a sentence that showed Mildred Lehman had a personal relationship to her topic when in 2004 she wrote the forward to “The Patient Safety Handbook.’’

Just after mentioning that 98,000 people die accidentally each year due to medical errors in hospitals, she added a sobering aside: “This aggrieved mother sees in the grim national numbers the sweet young face of a beautiful and talented daughter who left behind two children suddenly bereft.’’

Her daughter Betsy Lehman, a health columnist for the Globe, died in 1994 after receiving an overdose of chemotherapy at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. With an equanimity that impressed all, Mrs. Lehman found ways great and small to contribute to the Betsy Lehman Center for Patient Safety and Medical Error Reduction, launched nearly a decade after her daughter’s death.

Mrs. Lehman, who spent her youth in New England and returned after a career in writing and health care public affairs in Washington, D.C., died of complications of vascular dementia March 25 in Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Roslindale. She was 93 and had moved to Brookline more than a dozen years ago.

“Instead of becoming bitter, she found a couple of paths that helped her, and she made contributions,’’ said her daughter Ann Katz of Brookline. “One was being willing to speak publicly about the importance of patient safety and reduction of medical error.’’

Through the Betsy Lehman Center and its awards recognizing efforts by hospitals and health agencies to increase patient safety, Mrs. Lehman helped shield families from the sadness she knew firsthand.