“This recognition is well-deserved and long overdue,” said Consumer Reports President & CEO Marta Tellado.
As Director of CU’s Safe Patient Project, Lisa has been a tenacious advocate on a number of other patient safety issues, including working to eliminate preventable medical errors and to improve the safety of physician care and medical devices. She lobbies on national and state patient safety legislation and regulations to improve accountability and expand public disclosure about medical harm. Lisa provides a strong voice for consumers at conferences, with the media and when serving on state and national advisory committees, including current positions on the National Quality Forum Patient Safety Committee, the Measures Application Partnership (advises the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services on quality measures for public reporting and pay for performance programs), and CDC’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee.
She has led the development of a national patient safety activist network through collaboration with individuals who have personal experiences with medical harm, providing technical support and training for their work on state legislation and regulations.
Here’s what some Safe Patient Project activists had to say about Lisa’s award:
“Lisa has been a tireless leader in the fight to reduce deadly hospital infections and medical errors. Her work has helped save countless lives by shining the spotlight on this preventable epidemic and by mobilizing patients and their families to hold hospitals accountable for improving the care they provide. Lisa’s partnership with patient safety activists across the country has demonstrated how much impact ordinary citizens can have by joining together and working for change.”Lisa joined Consumers Union, the policy and advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, in 1991, working on a full array of health issues in Texas before launching the national Stop Hospital Infections campaign in 2003. Through this campaign, Consumers Union was instrumental in helping to pass legislation in 30 states requiring hospitals to publicly disclose their patient infection rates. Our success in the states helped prompt the federal government to establish a national hospital infection public reporting program in 2011.
As Director of CU’s Safe Patient Project, Lisa has been a tenacious advocate on a number of other patient safety issues, including working to eliminate preventable medical errors and to improve the safety of physician care and medical devices. She lobbies on national and state patient safety legislation and regulations to improve accountability and expand public disclosure about medical harm. Lisa provides a strong voice for consumers at conferences, with the media and when serving on state and national advisory committees, including current positions on the National Quality Forum Patient Safety Committee, the Measures Application Partnership (advises the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services on quality measures for public reporting and pay for performance programs), and CDC’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee.
She has led the development of a national patient safety activist network through collaboration with individuals who have personal experiences with medical harm, providing technical support and training for their work on state legislation and regulations.
Here’s what some Safe Patient Project activists had to say about Lisa’s award:
So good to see you, Lisa, on this list!! It shows what a strong leader of this movement you are and how our work is being heard and our voice is powerful.
Congratulations, Lisa!! We are honored to know you and to have been working with you to save more lives.
This is well deserved recognition for all you do in patient safety around the nation, and especially with the advocates and other people you touch every day! You are just getting started!We believe that Lisa’s work has made a real difference in the way that American health care is delivered, and her work opens minds and commands attention. From Suzanne Henry, Safe Patient Project Policy Analyst:
“Lisa influences the way leaders in healthcare approach their work when it comes to patient safety. She has led the charge to quantify patient safety measures, specifically hospital infections. And after ten years of passing laws to require reporting of hospital infections, the guessing game is over. Hospitals can now tell a story about their efforts to prevent infections. Patients can know if hospitals are reducing their infection rates. And reducing infections results in lives saved. Medical harm is the third leading cause of death in the U.S., a statistic that might have gone unnoticed and unchanged without Lisa’s work.”
