Dennis Quaid, Keynote Speaker at HIMSS 2009
April 6, 2009 - The majority of medical errors in hospitals are absolutely predictable human error, according to HIMSS 2009 keynote speaker Dennis Quaid, actor and founder of the Quaid Foundation.
In his keynote speech at HIMSS 2009, Quaid advocated for healthcare IT solutions that would help reduce errors. Specifically, he pointed to the need for bar coding medication, as well as adopting IT solutions such as computerized physician-order entry systems (CPOE) and electronic medical records (EMR).
Quaid and his wife founded the Quaid Foundation after their newborn twins in November of 2007 were twice administered massive overdoses of the anticoagulant heparin. The twins survived, after clinicians at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center administered Heparin instead of Hep-Lock, Heparin is one thousand times the strength of Hep-Lock, in an isolated error, or so it was thought.
This erro was not an isolated one. Three infants at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis a year prior to the Quaids’ incident had also been mistakenly administered Heparin instead of Hep-Lock.
It was a “chain of human errors,” said Quaid, beginning with the manufacturer’s near-identical packaging of Heparin and Hep-Lock, pharmacies releasing the incorrect version and hospital nurses administering the wrong version without carefully checking labels.
Dedicated to heightening public awareness of these kinds of errors, Quaid and his wife launched The Quaid Foundation, an organization with a mission to create transparency and accountability in the healthcare industry.
For more information: www.himss.org
March 14, 2024 
