Jeffrey C. Lerner, PhD, president and chief executive officer of ECRI Institute, has been selected as one of Becker's Hospital Review's "50 Experts Leading the Field of Patient Safety for 2017." The annual award recognizes 50 leaders who are champions for improving patient safety.
"While I’m honored to be named, the award is far more for our organization and our dedicated staff who are committed to improving the safety of healthcare," states Lerner. "Patient safety is at the heart of our mission and we work hard to improve it worldwide."
Founded nearly 50 years ago, ECRI Institute, an independent nonprofit organization that focuses on the safety, quality, and cost-effectiveness of healthcare, is a pioneer in patient safety. Recent milestones include the development of national patient safety reporting programs.
In 2008, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services named ECRI Institute one of the first federally designated Patient Safety Organizations (PSO). Since then, ECRI Institute PSO has collected and analyzed more than 1.5 million patient safety reports and collaborated on safe practices. By disseminating their shared learnings from analysis of these events, ECRI Institute PSO has achieved extraordinary contributions towards making care safer.
ECRI Institute PSO's data analytics provided insight into the need for a focus on health IT safety. In 2014, ECRI Institute convened the Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety, a private sector initiative that aims to develop an effective national framework for assuring patient safety in health IT through a collaborative multi-stakeholder effort.
The Partnership has released two safe practice recommendations: one on the safe use of copy and paste, and the second one on the safe use of health IT for patient identification. The toolkits and evidence reports are available for free.
Also as a free public service, ECRI Institute organizes an annual conference on the use of evidence in policy and practice. This year's 24th annual conference takes place November 28 and 29, 2017, in Washington, DC, at Georgetown University. Government agencies and nonprofit organizations who share ECRI Institute's drive for evidence-informed action co-plan and co-sponsor the program each year.
ECRI Institute freely disseminates a significant amount of patient safety research through special reports and e-newsletters. These resources can be accessed in our Patient Safety Center.
Source & Image Credit: ECRI Institute
