This week, ISMP celebrated the 27th annual CHEERS AWARDS, which recognize individuals, organizations, and groups that have demonstrated extraordinary commitment to advancing the science and study of patient safety. This year’s winners were honored at an awards ceremony held on December 10, 2024, at the Civic Theater in New Orleans, Louisiana. Please join us in celebrating the amazing accomplishments of this impressive group, who have helped advance vaccine safety, addressed opioid management, and has been a pioneer in the implementation of technology such as computerized prescriber order entry (CPOE) that can help reduce the risk of errors and adverse events.
CHEERS AWARDS Winners
The Quality Improvement Team at Cook Children’s Health Care System in Fort Worth, Texas, received a Cheers Award for significantly reducing the number of vaccine errors within their pediatric network. The team was formed to address errors related to immunizations, especially those involving complex vaccine age eligibility and vaccine series interval timing. They collaborated with the information technology department to integrate a clinical decision support tool into the electronic health record system that alerts healthcare providers to potential errors in real time. Since it was implemented, more than 9,000 inappropriate vaccine orders have been successfully averted by following the guidance provided by the clinical alerts. A substantial decrease in error rates was noted for most vaccines, with the most pronounced decline for the hepatitis A series, which achieved an impressive 91% reduction. The team also implemented a dashboard-based monitoring system for patient safety to ensure continuous improvement and oversight.
The Perioperative Opioid Stewardship Research Program at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, Canada, was honored for improving the way opioids are managed during post-surgery hospital discharge. The program aims to address overprescribing of opioids in pediatrics, minimize the volume of unnecessary opioids entering the community, and decrease the volume of unused opioids. The program team identified risks, modified practice standards, re-evaluated processes, and expanded their reach to other diagnoses. Their achievements include using technology and quality improvement methodology to safely decrease the amount of unused opioids retained by patients in the home from 83% to 17% and creating a new pathway to facilitate the return and disposal of unused opioids. They also addressed language barriers and improved access by translating all educational documents into the ten most used languages in their surgical population, allowing more families to participate.
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Winner
One of the highlights of the evening was the presentation of the 2024 MICHAEL R. COHEN LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD. This award has recently been re-dedicated in honor of ISMP Founder and President Emeritus Michael R. Cohen and is given to individuals who have made ongoing contributions to patient safety throughout their careers. This year’s honoree, David W. Bates, MD, MSc, an internationally renowned safety expert, has conducted groundbreaking work evaluating the incidence and preventability of adverse drug events.
Dr. Bates has demonstrated that information technology such as CPOE and clinical decision support can decrease the risk of serious medication errors, and CPOE has now been implemented in health systems and facilities across the United States. He has published more than 1,200 peer-reviewed papers that have been cited over 155,000 times and is among the 400 most cited biomedical researchers. His research has been referred to in Health Care Financing Administration regulations, the Medicare Patient Advisory Commission’s 1999 Report to Congress, and the Institute of Medicine’s report To Err is Human.
Dr. Bates is the Medical Director of Clinical and Quality Analysis at Mass General Brigham, and a Senior Physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). In addition, he directs the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice at BWH, which focuses on improving medication safety across the continuum of care and patient groups. Dr. Bates also is a professor at both Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and is editor of the Journal of Patient Safety.
He has received multiple awards, including the first John M. Eisenberg Award for excellence in patient safety research from the National Quality Forum and the Henry Christian Award for excellence in research from the American Federation for Clinical Research.
In his acceptance remarks, Dr. Bates described how he met Michael Cohen and was introduced to the work of ISMP. He talked about becoming interested in the field of medication safety, conducting an adverse drug event prevention study and later showing that CPOE can make a substantial difference. Dr. Bates also discussed his work on the impact of barcode scanning and smart infusion pumps, and shared some findings from a SafeCare study that has just been completed. The SafeCare study showed that despite all the progress that has been made, about one in four patients is harmed during a hospital admission and one in fifteen is harmed per year in the outpatient setting. Medications are the leading cause of harm in both settings. Dr. Bates went on to outline some ways that the healthcare community can work together in the future to further advance medication safety.
Thanks and Looking Forward
We would like to express our gratitude to all of the organizations and individuals who attended and/or supported this year’s CHEERS AWARDS. Visit the Cheers Event webpage for a list of contributors and winners; you can also make a Donation to help support ISMP’s lifesaving efforts.
ISMP wishes you happy holidays, and we look forward to continuing to work together on preventing errors and keeping patients safe in 2025.
