Personal Injury Law

Patient Safety Movie Released

By Steven M. Levin and John J. Perconti

The Wall Street Journal is reporting about the release of ?Chasing Zero: Winning the War on Healthcare Harm? at the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Health Care. The movie stars actor Dennis Quaid, whose twin children were victims of medical malpractice. In 2007 his newborn twins were accidentally given an overdose of the blood thinner heparin at a hospital in Los Angeles. Thankfully, both children survived and Quinn became a passionate advocate for patient safety. He has appeared on Oprah to raise awareness of the large number of medical mistakes and he discusses different strategies that can prevent them.

Quaid has merged his Quaid Foundation with TMIT, a non-profit research concern run by patient safety expert and physician Charles Denham. This company oversaw the production of the hour-long documentary. After the documentary airs on TV, the company will distribute copies of the movie to all 5,700 hospitals in the U.S. This will hopefully reinforce the importance of adopting safe practices developed by the National Quality Forum. This company develops voluntary safety guidelines for the hospital. The head of the company stated that since there are an estimated 100,000 deaths each year from hospital infections and an estimated 100,000 deaths each year from medical error the message is extremely important.

While talking to Quaid, he stated that his twins are doing well. However, he noted that last week a toddler died from a heparin overdose linked to an infusion pump setting error. This is just one of the many examples of medical error throughout the country. To read more about this groundbreaking movie, please click the link.

Full post as published by Illinois Medical Malpractice Blog on May 23, 2010 (boomark / email).