Joint Commission names 2025 top organizations, individual for patient safety, quality

The Joint Commission awarded three individuals and organizations for excellence in patient safety and healthcare quality.

The John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Awards, launched in 2002, recognize major achievements by individuals and organizations to improve care and safety. There are three categories:

• Individual achievement: Individuals who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and scholarship in patient safety and health care quality through a substantive body of work
• National level innovation in patient safety and quality: An organization whose original project initiative extends beyond local areas to being implemented across the country to achieve national impact. 
• Local level innovation in patient safety and quality: The organization’s project or initiative focuses on effecting impact at the local community, organization or regional level.

Here are the 2025 award winners.

Rollin (Terry) Fairbanks, MD. Senior Vice President of Quality and Safety at MedStar Health (Columbia, Md.): Dr. Fairbanks was awarded the individual achievement award for his work in applying human factors engineering to healthcare. He founded the National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare, which has driven innovations in safety culture, event review, EHR safety design and health IT usability globally. He co-developed root cause analyses and actions and the communication and optimal resolution toolkit, and created the YouTube video “Annie Story” on just culture. 

Children’s Hospital Association: The Children’s Hospital Association was given the national innovation award for its Improving Pediatric Sepsis Outcomes Collaborative, which engaged 66 children’s hospitals in a seven-year initiative to reduce pediatric sepsis mortality and disparities. By implementing evidence-based care bundles and leveraging automated EHR data abstraction, the collaborative improved sepsis recognition compliance from 57% to 76.5% and reduced mortality from 2.2% to 1.5%.

University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (Little Rock): UAMS was given the local innovation award for its organ transplantation access in underserved rural communities in Arkansas. The program established seven satellite regional transplant clinics to improve access and reduce the need for travel to the main campus. These efforts increased referrals by 101%, reduced time between referral and evaluation by 40 days, reduced time from evaluation to being added to the waitlist by 39 days, shortened post-transplant stay from five to three days, and increased the additions to the patient waitlist by 106%.

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