Patient Safety "Checklist" Doctor Lands Top Spot in Time's 100 Most Influential People

Peter Pronovost, the Johns Hopkins Doctor who has amassed acclaim for his successful "checklist approach" in decreasing preventable medical errors has landed a much-coveted spot among Time's 100 Most Influential People.

We covered Pronovost's work back in December (post located here) and it's both exciting and rewarding to see a patient safety advocate--working for change from within the walls of the healthcare institution--be recognized in such company as the Dalai Lama, Oprah Winfrey and Steve Jobs.

According to the article: "In science you learn that the simplest answer is often the best. That's a principle sometimes lost in a world of high-tech medicine—but not on Dr. Peter Pronovost. A critical-care researcher at Johns Hopkins University, Pronovost may have saved more lives than any laboratory scientist in the past decade by relying on a wonderfully simple tool: a checklist.

In the U.S., hospital-acquired infections affect 1 in 10 patients, killing 90,000 of them and costing as much as $11 billion each year. Pronovost, 43, began investigating this alarming trend at Johns Hopkins' hospital in 2001 and concluded that arming physicians with a chart reminding them of each step in routine procedures drastically reduces the medical errors that lead to such infections. After he published his results in several prominent journals, the medical community started listening. Michigan hospitals began implementing Pronovost's checklists in ICUs in 2003. Within three months, hospital-acquired infections at typical ICUs in the state dropped from 2.7 per 1,000 patients to zero. More than 1,500 lives were saved in the first 18 months."

With our own technology and 24-7 monitoring service, Hospital Video Auditing (HVA), we, too, employ a checklist approach across a wide range of clinical and non-clinical processes including hand hygiene protocols and central line insertion policies. Indeed, the simple acts of double-checking as Pronovost advocates...and implementing support systems that guard against human error with HVA...lead to incredible results. And those results directly equate to lives saved, increased trust and billions of dollars that can be invested on finding cures instead of fighting lawsuits that could have been altogether prevented.

More on HVA here
Time article located here
Post on the New Yorker article located here
Image above courtesy of Time