ISMP Announces 29th Annual Cheers Award Recipients

Awardees advance oral chemotherapy management, insulin pump safety, human-centered design, and safer medication labeling

The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) has named the recipients of its 29th Annual Cheers Awards, recognizing individuals and organizations that have demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to advancing medication and patient safety. The awards ceremony will be held December 8, 2026, at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida.

“This year’s award recipients demonstrate the impact that thoughtful system design, multidisciplinary collaboration, and a sustained commitment to learning can have on medication safety,” said Rita K. Jew, PharmD, MBA, BCPPS, FASHP, President of ISMP. “Their work addresses complex safety challenges with practical solutions that can help protect patients and inspire improvement across healthcare.”

Cheers Awards Winners

Kaweah Health 
Visalia, California 
Kaweah Health is being recognized for replacing variable, clinician-dependent management of inpatient oral chemotherapy with standardized safety processes embedded in the electronic health record. As oral chemotherapy use has expanded, hospitals nationwide face increasing challenges in safely managing these high-risk medications during inpatient care, where they may be managed by clinicians without specialized oncology training. Following implementation of their enhanced system, documentation of comprehensive pharmacist evaluations increased from approximately 67% to 97% of oral chemotherapy orders. Orders with documented pharmacist intervention increased from 5% to 33%, and hazardous drug auxiliary labeling for non-formulary oral chemotherapy increased from 22% to 98%. The system now generates a structured oral chemotherapy assessment form at order verification and daily while an order remains active. Additional enhancements more clearly identify non-formulary oral chemotherapy, automate hazardous drug labeling and handling precautions, and notify a chemotherapy-trained nurse and the bedside nurse when an independent double check is required.

Novant Health 
North Carolina 
Novant Health is receiving a Cheers Award for Project RED (Remarkable Excellence in Diabetes), a systemwide initiative that transformed inpatient management of personal insulin pumps across 16 acute care hospitals. Following implementation, the median time from admission to insulin pump order entry decreased from 7.4 to 2.3 hours, use of the standardized order set increased from 77% to 98%, and no insulin pump-related serious safety events were reported in 2026 through preparation of the award nomination. The collaborative process combined electronic health record enhancements, standardized identification and escalation workflows, an optimized insulin pump order set, visual wristband identification, backup-insulin and refill processes, pharmacist review, competency validation, and ongoing monitoring. Project RED also expanded the roles of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in identifying pump users, assessing supplies and backup plans, and notifying a pharmacist when concerns arise so they can collaborate with the prescriber to determine whether pump therapy could safely continue.

The University of Kansas Health System 
Lenexa, Kansas 
The Pharmacy Shared Services Department at The University of Kansas Health System is being honored for developing an in-house 3D-printing program that uses engineering controls, standardization, and human-centered design to reduce medication-selection risks and improve access to critical medications. The team launched the program after observing that anesthesia workstation drawers allowed dividers to shift, drug labels to be obscured, and medication vials to migrate. They built a software application that generates drawer layouts and prints modular bins with a compartment sized for each product, drug names and concentrations embedded directly in the plastic, and color coding for anesthesia drug classes that matches the syringe labels printed in the operating room. They also redesigned rapid-sequence intubation kits with a bright red hinged lid bearing embedded warning text that physically separates high-risk, look-alike medications. The program has converted 79 anesthesia workstations and deployed more than 250 redesigned kits. No storage-related selection errors or near misses have been reported in converted areas, and a follow-up audit after approximately 60 weeks identified no safety hazards in 21 evaluated workstation drawers.

George DiDomizio Award

The George DiDomizio Award, given in memory of a late ISMP trustee, recognizes members of the pharmaceutical industry who have made important and lasting contributions to patient safety. 

Baxter Healthcare Corporation
Deerfield, Illinois 
Baxter Healthcare Corporation is being recognized for a label differentiation initiative designed to reduce product selection errors involving certain premixed intravenous (IV) products.  A cross-functional team at Baxter identified several factors contributing to product selection errors involving insulin, and particular vasoactive agents, antiarrhythmics, and antibiotics, and applied human factors principles to redesign product labels for additional visual differentiation. Baxter also developed new ink formulations and colors, expanding the number of colors, color combinations, and shapes available to further distinguish products from one another. The initiative demonstrates how manufacturers can address upstream sources of product confusion that can contribute to medication errors through thoughtful package and label design that supplements downstream safeguards such as barcode scanning. This work has also led to additional Baxter label differentiation projects.

Michael R. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award

The Michael R. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award is named in honor of ISMP Founder and President Emeritus Michael R. Cohen and recognizes individuals who have made sustained and influential contributions to patient safety throughout their careers. 

Robert M. Wachter, MD
Professor and Chair, Department of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)
Dr. Robert M. Wachter is a nationally recognized leader in patient safety, medication safety, digital health, and healthcare quality. He has helped shape the modern patient safety movement through decades of research, teaching, policy leadership, and public engagement. His many contributions include foundational evidence reviews of patient safety practices, including computerized prescriber order entry, clinical decision support, adverse drug event prevention, and medication reconciliation.

Dr. Wachter is the author of 300 articles and six books, including Understanding Patient Safety and The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age, which have educated generations of clinicians and healthcare leaders about medication-related harm, alert fatigue, usability problems, and the promise and potential risks of technology-enabled care. His latest bestselling book, A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future, urges the field to approach AI with safe design, thoughtful implementation, and ongoing accountability in mind.

He is a past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, a past chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. He has received the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award from the National Quality Forum and Joint Commission, and Modern Healthcare has named him one of the 50 most influential physician-executives in the U.S. more than a dozen times.

For information about the 29th Annual ISMP Cheers Awards, visit the ISMP Cheers Awards event page. 

Contact Renee Brehio, PR & Communications Specialist, rbrehio@ismp.org

About ISMP 
The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) is the nation’s first 501c (3) nonprofit organization devoted entirely to preventing medication errors. ISMP is known and respected as the gold standard for medication safety information. For more than 30 years, it also has served as a vital force for progress. ISMP’s advocacy work alone has resulted in numerous necessary changes in clinical practice, public policy, and drug labeling and packaging. Among its many initiatives, ISMP runs the only national voluntary practitioner medication error reporting program, publishes newsletters with real-time error information read and trusted throughout the global healthcare community, and offers a wide range of unique educational programs, tools, and guidelines. In 2020, ISMP was acquired by ECRI, a global organization advancing safe, evidence-based healthcare. The ECRI and ISMP Patient Safety Organization (PSO) is a federally certified patient safety organization by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As a watchdog organization, ISMP receives no advertising revenue and depends entirely on charitable donations, educational grants, membership subscriptions, and volunteer efforts to pursue its life-saving work. Learn more at www.ismp.org.