In his five years on the job, Dr. Ernie Ring taught me why the Chief Medical Officer role is crucial, and how to do it right. Since Ernie is retiring at week’s end, it seems like an opportune time to share what I’ve learned. A bit of background. UCSF Medical Center didn’t have a Chief Medical Officer until about 8 years ago; indeed, even today ...

I gave a keynote yesterday to the first-ever meeting on “Diagnostic Error in Medicine.” I hope the confab helps put diagnostic errors on the safety map. But, as Ricky Ricardo would say, the experts and advocates in the audience have some ‘splainin’ to do.I date the origin of the patient safety field to the publication of the IOM report on medical ...

In this week’s JAMA, Dr. Don Berwick, CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, argues that evidence-based standards should be relaxed for quality improvement practices. Ironically, a few pages away, a Swiss study finds than an IHI-endorsed MRSA prevention strategy doesn't work.What’s a person or hospital to do?A little background on both ...

I must admit, I didn’t hold out high hopes that a ragtag band of committed clinicians and other quality improvers could change federal policy. But we’ve done just that. If the Feds are capable of rectifying this mistake, who knows what might be next!For those unfamiliar with the Hopkins-Michigan-OHRP checklist story, it is described on my prior ...

Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to write, blog, and rant about the OHRP's horrific decision to shut down the Hopkins-Michigan ICU checklist study, a decision that threatens the future of quality improvement and safety efforts in American healthcare. Today, the major hospital-based societies – representing over 100,000 clinicians and ...

The patient safety and quality movements are precious and fragile. Just as IOM reports I and II spawned these modern, life-saving revolutions, the Federal shutdown of the Hopkins/Michigan checklist program may help extinguish them. After all, Tipping Points can tip both ways.I laid out the issues in this prior post. Those of you who know me know ...

As you may know, I’ve argued that that the quality and safety of healthcare have traditionally been underregulated. But regulators are like patients with Parkinson’s: it’s hard to get them unglued, but once they’re moving, it’s hard to stop them. Welcome to Exhibit A.Last month, I described Atul Gawande’s thrilling New Yorker article recounting ...

Today my pals Peter Lindenauer and Andy Auerbach (and colleagues) published the largest hospitalist outcomes study to date, in the New England Journal of Medicine. It is a rigorous, important piece of work. Let me try to add a bit of context.First, the What’s What. Using the massive database of the Premier system (which Peter has mined to ...

My older son is gearing up to apply to college (:-\ and so I bought him one of the Bibles, the Fiske Guide. The book is cleverly written – enough academic factoids to get parents to spring for it, leavened with enough social scene skinny to get kids to read it. The Guide dutifully lists ranges of SAT scores for accepted applicants at 300 ...

While driving into work earlier this week, I heard a wonderful interview with Jim Dierke, principal of Visitation Valley Middle School here in San Francisco. VV is one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, and this gentleman – who recently won a national middle school “principal of the year” award – has managed to increase attendance rates ...