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Experts Available to Discuss Minimizing Medical Errors and Optimizing Patient Safety in Hospitals

Posted on: Tuesday, 22 July 2008, 12:01 CDT

ExpertSource:

TOPIC: A recent study on patient safety in American hospitals, conducted by HealthGrades, found more than 238,000 Medicare patients died between 2004 and 2006 as a result of preventable medical errors, according to an article by Newsweek. The article cites the four most common ways medical care goes awry, and offers risk-reducing suggestions. Some of the most common mistakes include medication errors, poor communication between doctor and patient, falls and infections, and surgical errors.

EXPERTS: ExpertSource can offer several highly qualified experts to comment on this story:

Mike Reno, vice president at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, has executive oversight and service line responsibility for the cardiology, cardiovascular and neuroscience services, and is administratively responsible for diagnostic and therapeutic imaging, radiology and nuclear medicine. He oversees the physical medicine and rehabilitation services, serving as the administrator for the 24-bed Rehab hospital within a hospital. Mike also oversees the hospital's support service operations, including facility master planning, architecture and construction, clinical technology, parking and transportation, food and nutrition, safety and security, environmental services, mail and messenger services, facilities engineering and building and grounds operations. Additionally, Mike co-chairs the Patient Safety and Quality Committee, tasked with ensuring compliance with various regulatory agencies, including the Joint Commission Environment of Care Standards, serves as the hospital's Emergency Management Coordinator and is the project executive for the Patient Care Center capital building project and the executive sponsor for the implementation of LEAN, the Toyota Production System, as the hospital's standard operating procedure.

PR Contact: Deb Eisenberg 301-523-9224 deisenberg1@comcast.net

James Parish joined RWD Technologies in 2000, and serves as Executive Vice President of RWD's Performance Solutions group. Mr. Parish's group provides clients with training and process improvement solutions for lean manufacturing, back office, supply chain, manufacturing, engineering, logistics, safety, and health and environmental applications. Before assuming his current position, Mr. Parish served as the manager of the ACTS Consortium workforce development project, a member of the Governance Committee of Sigma Learning (a Limited Liability Committee serving Delphi Corp.), and as a departmental director. Prior to joining RWD Technologies, he was vice president and general manager for U.S. Axle, Inc. He also held various senior management positions for Diesel Technology Company during its transition from a division of General Motors to a major supplier of diesel fuel systems. Following five years as a co-op student, Mr. Parish held progressively more responsible engineering and engineering management responsibilities at General Motors. Mr. Parish holds a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from GMI Management and Engineering Institute and his M.B.A. from Grand Valley State University.

PR Contact: Deb Eisenberg 301-523-9224 deisenberg1@comcast.net

Gina Pugliese, RN, MS, is vice president of the Premier Safety Institute, editor of its Safety Share online newsletter, and is responsible for the overall content of the Safety Institute's Web site. She is an associate faculty member of Rush University College of Nursing and a member of the adjunct faculty of the University of Illinois School of Public Health, Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, in Chicago. In addition, she is the senior associate editor of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology and serves on the editorial board of the Joint Commission Journal on Quality Improvement and Safety. She served as co-chair for 16 years and is currently on the faculty of the international Healthcare Epidemiology Training Program that is co-sponsored by the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). For eight years, Pugliese was the director of safety of the American Hospital Association (AHA).

For more than 25 years, she has served in clinical, teaching, and administrative positions in nursing, hospital administration, safety, and infection control. She is the author of more than 130 publications and has developed and/or served as faculty in over 400 national and international educational conferences in 14 countries and 25 national videotapes and teleconferences. Pugliese has served on a number of national committees for JCAHO, CDC, FDA, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the National Quality Forum (NQF) to assist in guideline-setting and regulatory processes related to patient safety and infection prevention and control. Pugliese is currently a member of a technical advisory panel for the CMS National Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP) and the NQF Voluntary Consensus Standards for the Reporting of Healthcare-associated Infection Data. Pugliese has received numerous honors for her work in healthcare epidemiology, patient safety and infection prevention, including a special recognition award from the U.S. Department of Labor in 1991, the AHA Employee of the Year in 1992 and APIC's Carol DeMille Outstanding Achievement Award in 2001. In 2005, the Gina Pugliese Scholarship was established by SHEA for a clinician to attend each of the bi-annual SHEA/CDC international Healthcare Epidemiology Training Courses.

PR Contact: Alven Weil 704-733-5797 alven_weil@premierinc.com www.premierinc.com/about/news

ExpertSource cannot guarantee the immediate availability of these experts or their familiarity with this specific issue.

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Source: Business Wire

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