Overworked, underappreciated  hospital staff all make mistakes and according to safety experts, the overwhelming majority of medical errors are due to systems failures that allow absolutely predictable human error to occur. This was the message Dennis Quaid, founder (along with wife Kimberly) of the Quaid Foundation, presented, as he addressed and opened to an audience in attendance at the HIMSS conference as the Keynote Speaker.

Ten days after Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace Quaid were born in November of 2007, Kimberly and Dennis noticed what looked to be a slight irritation on Thomas’s belly and on Zoe’s finger.  Hospital staff at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (CSMC) was to treat the twins with Hep-Lock to prevent infection, but a medical mistake led to their treatment with Heparin, one thousand times the strength, as Heparin and Hep-Lock are almost identically packaged.  Needless to say the stronger anticoagulant can lead to death, just as what happened to three other babies at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis only a year earlier. “I'm an actor,” Dennis said during his keynote speech.  “If I make a mistake, it's called take two, or three or thirty-seven.  When a caretaker makes a mistake, it could mean somebody's life.  Medical staff, more often than not, work without a safety net and work, sometimes 24-hour shifts and are expected to make crucial decisions with clarity and sound judgment for every patient in their care.”

With a mission to create transparency and accountability in the healthcare industry, Dennis Quaid proudly gave credit to his twins, now 17 months old, to what has been accomplished since that fateful day. Advances in patient safety and reduction in medical errors have taken place after CSMC spent approximately $100 million on bar-coding medication, steps and efforts Dennis emotionally applauded.  “I’m proud of Thomas and Zoe, but where do we go from here?” Dennis questioned.

With respect, thankfulness, and a plea from the medical and information technology, expert filled audience, Dennis urged the need to pull the medical industry into the 21st century, making barcoding, CPOE (Computerized Physician Order Entry), and EHR (Electronic Health Records) available in every hospital all across this country.  Dennis remarked, “We truly are at the doorstep of a new age in healthcare.”