Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, is holding a hearing July 17 on the need to improve patient safety.
About 400,000 Americans die annually from preventable medical harm, and medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, according to a 2013 study.
The hearing, titled "More Than 1,000 Preventable Deaths a Day is Too Many: The Need to Improve Patient Safety," has a powerhouse witness list. The witnesses will include:
• John James, PhD, founder of Patient Safety America
• Ashish Jha, MD, professor of health policy and management at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston
• Tejal Gandhi, MD, president of the National Patient Safety Foundation and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School
• Peter Pronovost, PhD, senior vice president for patient safety and quality and director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine
• Joanne Disch, PhD, RN, professor ad honorem at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing in Minneapolis
• Lisa McGiffert, director of the Safety Patient Project
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