Susannah Fox*, Pew Foundation, Washington, United States Joe Graedon*, People's Pharmacy, Inc., Durham, United States Heather Wellington*, Patients as Partners, Hopkinton, MA, United States Daniel B Hoch*, Harvard Medical School/MGH, Boston, United States Lisa Gualtieri*, Tuffts Medical School, Boston, United States Track: Practice Presentation Topic: Participatory health care Presentation Type: Panel Submission Type: Panel Presentation Building: Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School Room: Auditorium Date: 2012-09-15 11:45 AM – 12:30 PM Last modified: 2012-09-12

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The publication by The Institute of Medicine of "To Err Is Human" may have launched the modern era of patient safety, but patients could reasonably be said to have attended to these issues long before the IOM. Through the courts, lay organizations and most recently on line, patients have taken an active role in patient safety. Unfortunately patient-initiated projects to improve the quality and safety of care have often happened with no engagement or recognition by mainstream professionals. Those academic and other professionals engaged in the patients safety movement frequently see safety as a system issue, where the system includes physicians, other providers, and institutions. It is something done “to” or “for” patients, not by them. This may be because of the history of adversarial patient-provider interactions over medical errors. Fortunately, new technologies and cultural shifts have set the stage for increased patient-provider collaboration on patient safety.

This panel will examine the present state of patient-provider cooperation on medical safety and explore future trends. Susannah Fox from the Pew Internet and American Life project will provide data and insight about how Americans are presently using the Internet and social media to assess healthcare quality and guide their decisions about medical care. Joe Graedon, author of The People's Pharmacy, will describe his experience with adverse drug reporting and the challenges of working with established regulatory structures to promote safety. Dan Hoch, a pioneer in online patient communities, will explore potential barriers to patient-provider collaboration. Lisa Gualtieri, Tufts Medical School, will review possible strategies for enhancing the ways that patients and providers communicate and the tools that could be used for collaboration on patient safety. Heather Wellington, founder of the patient organization Patients as Partners, will discuss possibilities for patient engagement and collaborative care through technologies such as Electronic Health Records and Health Information Exchanges and how coordination of care impacts the safety of care.