News in brief - Oct. 20, 2003

Eisenberg Award winners named - RWJ releases medical liability study - NIH has ideas for spurring research - NIH awards grants for stem cell research - Georgia physician gets award from family physician group

Eisenberg Award winners named

Recipients of the second annual John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety Awards included an anesthesia technology expert, a national coalition of major employers, a local Pennsylvania health care system with national recognition and a Pennsylvania hospital that acted on the call to use systems approaches to reduce errors.

Jeffrey Cooper, PhD, director of anesthesia technology and biomedical engineering at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital, won the Individual Lifetime Achievement Award for applying human factors research to anesthesia safety and pioneering the use of critical incident analysis.

The Leapfrog Group, a Washington, D.C.-based business coalition, won the national Advocacy Award for using its influence to encourage hospitals to adopt certain patient safety practices and goals. The Allentown, Pa.-based Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network won the local Advocacy Award for including patients in its systems approach to reducing adverse events.

Abington Memorial Hospital in Abington, Pa., which recently won the American Hospital Assn.'s American Hospital Quest for Quality Award, won the System Innovation Award for the creation of its "Virtual Anticoagulation Clinic," which has successfully reduced morbidity and mortality of patients taking anticoagulants.

The awards are named for the late John M. Eisenberg, MD, former director of the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and a leader in patient safety efforts. The awards are sponsored by the National Quality Forum and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. No awards were given for patient safety research this year.

RWJ releases medical liability study

Some physicians are referring more patients to emergency departments, refusing to provide on-call ED coverage and declining elective referrals because of rising liability insurance rates, according to a study by the Center for Studying Health System Change, a Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan policy research organization funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

"While we didn't find breakdowns in access to care, it's clear liability pressures are altering physicians' treatment decisions and affecting patient care in unexpected ways in many communities," said Paul B. Ginsburg, PhD, center president.

The study was based on visits to 12 areas, including Boston, Cleveland, Miami, Phoenix and Seattle.

NIH has ideas for spurring research

The National Institutes of Health recently announced plans to improve the ways that scientific knowledge is transformed into tangible benefits.

Called the "NIH Roadmap for Medical Research," the initiative examines ways to boost medical research, interlink disparate disciplines within the sciences and restructure the clinical trials system.

"We hope to remove some of the biggest roadblocks that are keeping research findings from reaching the public as swiftly as possible," said NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, MD. "These efforts cover a broad spectrum of points between the lab and the clinic -- from basic biological research such as determining protein structure, to the front lines of clinical research, such as improving the training of the physicians and nurses who run clinical trials."

In the area of clinical trials, the NIH promotes the creation of better integrated networks of academic centers that work jointly on trials and include community-based doctors.

"The era of the single-purpose isolated clinical trial with no standardization across trials is coming to a close," said Stephen Katz, MD, PhD, director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. "The development of a common infrastructure for clinical research must be explored."

NIH will begin to implement all of the initiatives in fiscal year 2004.

NIH awards grants for stem cell research

Three human embryonic stem cell research pilot projects will be financed by three-year grants totaling more than $6.3 million, the National Institutes of Health has announced.

The NIH said a goal of the research was to train more scientists to work with stem cells and that a shortage of researchers with expertise in this field has been slowing the rate of scientific advancement.

Awards are going to the University of Washington, Seattle/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, and WiCell Research Institutes in Madison, Wis. The University of Washington, Seattle/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center will receive $753,000 during the first year of funding, and is charged with improving methods for comparing, culturing, differentiating, maintaining and manipulating 12 federally approved human embryonic stem cell lines.

The University of Michigan Medical School, will receive $778,000 in the first year to develop research tools and apply knowledge of cell biology, developmental genetics and tissue biology to the study of human embryonic stem cells.

WiCell Research Institutes will receive $669,000 the first year to create a facility to provide cell tissue culture support, investigate how stem cells develop into neurons and study why some stem cells lose their ability to renew.

Georgia physician gets award from family physician group

Kathleen E. Toomey, MD, MPH, received the 2003 Public Health Award from the American Academy of Family Physicians at its annual Scientific Assembly in New Orleans this month.

Since 1997, Dr. Toomey, an epidemiologist and family physician, has been director of the Division of Public Health for the Georgia Dept. of Human Resources in Atlanta. She sets public health policy, oversees a $525 million budget and leads 6,000 public health employees.

Dr. Toomey is a member of Georgia's Homeland Security Task Force and spearheads the state's medical and public health efforts regarding bioterrorism and medical emergency preparedness.

She is a member of the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Board of the Institute of Medicine and of the executive board of the Assn. of State and Territorial Health Officials. She has served on committees and boards of many other professional organizations, including the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and the American Public Health Assn.

The AAFP established the Public Health Award in 1992 to recognize extraordinary individuals who make outstanding contributions to improving America's health.