Editor’s Notebook: New Advisors Broaden Board’s Focus
October / December 2004
Editor’s Notebook
New Advisors Broaden Board’s Focus
In Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare (PSQH), we intend to reflect as many aspects of the patient safety movement as possible. Four industry experts recently appointed to the Editorial Advisory Board do exactly that, bringing a wide range of training and experience to PSQH.
Martin J. Hatlie and Susan E. Sheridan are well-known for their work on behalf of consumers and patients. With Roxanne Goeltz, they are co-founders of Consumers Advancing Patient Safety (CAPS), a nonprofit formed in 2003 to be a “collective voice for individuals, families, and healers who wish to prevent harm in healthcare settings through partnership and collaboration.” The goal of CAPS is healthcare that is safe, compassionate, and just. In addition to helping guide our editorial plans, Hatlie and Sheridan will provide a regular column on consumer and patient issues, the first of which is on page 6 of this issue. They plan to include guest authors from time to time, adding diverse voices to “Consumers as Partners.”
Sue Sheridan’s introduction to safety issues — and her motivation to make a difference — came through grave medical errors, which led to her son’s permanent disability from untreated newborn jaundice, known as kernicterus, in 1995 and her husband’s death in 2002 from failure to communicate a diagnosis of cancer. She is co-founder of Parents of Infants and Children with Kernicterus (PICK), a nonprofit devoted to preventing kernicterus and realizing the full potential of people who have it. She also leads the Patients for Patient Safety track of the World Alliance for Patient Safety, launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) in October 2004.
Marty Hatlie is president of Partnership for Patient Safety (p4ps), a patient-centered initiative that advances ethical, highly reliable care through policy development; coalition building; and training in communication about safety and medicolegal ethics, among other services. Hatlie is co-editor with Advisory Board member Barbara Youngberg of The Patient Safety Handbook (Jones and Barlett, 2004). Hatlie coordinated the establishment of the National Patient Safety Foundation at the American Medical Association (AMA) in 1997 and served as its founding executive director until 1999. Among his current commitments is service on JCAHO’s Sentinel Event Advisory Group.
Douglas Dotan and Sanjaya Kumar bring diverse backgrounds to their work providing computerized management systems for medical error reporting. Dotan, president and founder of CRG Medical, has more than 30 years of experience in quality, risk, human factors, and safety, beginning with service as a pilot and accident investigator for the Israeli Air Force. He is also certified as a flight safety officer in aircraft accident investigation by the U.S. Air Force. CRG Medical provides best practices for process improvement, including the AIMS software suite for data collection, classification, and analysis and has recently established the CRG Medical Foundation for Patient Safety.
Sanjaya Kumar is chief medical officer and president of Quantros, which provides web-based systems that automate incident collection, follow-up, root-cause analysis, and regulatory reporting. Prior to establishing Quantros, Kumar was a clinical specialist for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) working with quality improvement organizations (QIOs). In that role, he served as clinical lead on a number of cooperative clinical quality improvement projects.