 ECRI headquarters in Plymouth Meeting | |
| Formation | 1968 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Joel J. Nobel |
| Focus | Healthcare research |
| Location | |
Area served | Worldwide |
President/CEO | Marcus Schabacker |
| Peter Catalano | |
| Lea Rubini | |
Employees | 550 |
| Website | ecri |
ECRI (originally founded as Emergency Care Research Institute) is an independent nonprofit organization tasked with "improving the safety, quality, and cost-effectiveness of care across all healthcare settings worldwide."
In the early 1960s, Joel J. Nobel, a surgeon and inventor, founded the institute [1] after a four-year-old boy died when a resuscitator failed to work. Nobel utilized the institute to focus on improving cardiopulmonary resuscitation technology, design, and deployment.
Among Nobel's inventions was the MAX Cart, a mobile resuscitation system. [2] Designed and patented in 1965 during Nobel's residency at Pennsylvania Hospital, the cart carries instruments for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and other medical supplies while functioning as a support litter. A prototype is in the permanent collection of the Medicine and Science Division of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. [3] In 1966, Life profiled the invention in a feature called "MAX, the Lifesaver." [4]
ECRI began comparative evaluations of medical device brands and models in 1971. Since its designation as an Evidence-based Practice Center with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in 1997, [5] it has undertaken reviews of clinical procedures using meta-analysis for the Medicare program, other federal and state agencies, and clinical specialty organizations.
In 2001, Jeffrey C. Lerner became ECRI Institute's second president and CEO. In 2018, Marcus Schabacker became ECRI's third president and CEO. [6]
The Institute for Safe Medication Practices became an ECRI affiliate in 2020. [7]
The organization rebranded as ECRI Institute in 2007. [8] On March 8, 2020, the organization rebranded as ECRI. [9] [10]
ECRI Patient Safety Organization was listed as a federal patient safety organization by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005. [11] [12]
ECRI entered into a licensing agreement to adapt the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System (PA-PSRS), to meet Pennsylvania-specific reporting requirements. The resulting PA-PSRS system is fully owned by the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority. [13]
The organization was the sole prime contractor for developing and maintaining AHRQ's National Guideline Clearinghouse, a database of clinical practice guidelines, since its inception in 1998 and the National Quality Measures Clearinghouse, [14] a database of evidence-based healthcare quality measures, since its inception in 2001. Both contracts ended in July 2018 due to the lack of federal funding through AHRQ to continue their operation. [15]
ECRI Institute created and maintains the Universal Medical Device Nomenclature System (UMDNS). [16] [17]
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is an emergency procedure consisting of chest compressions often combined with artificial ventilation, or mouth to mouth in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore spontaneous blood circulation and breathing in a person who is in cardiac arrest. It is recommended for those who are unresponsive with no breathing or abnormal breathing, for example, agonal respirations.
Basic life support (BLS) is a level of medical care which is used for patients with life-threatening illnesses or injuries until they can be given full medical care by advanced life support providers. It can be provided by trained medical personnel, such as emergency medical technicians, and by qualified bystanders.
Laerdal is a multinational company that develops products and programs for healthcare providers, voluntary organizations, educational institutions, hospitals, and the military worldwide. Laerdal has over 2,000 employees in 26 countries. The headquarters is located in Stavanger, Norway.
A medical guideline is a document with the aim of guiding decisions and criteria regarding diagnosis, management, and treatment in specific areas of healthcare. Such documents have been in use for thousands of years during the entire history of medicine. However, in contrast to previous approaches, which were often based on tradition or authority, modern medical guidelines are based on an examination of current evidence within the paradigm of evidence-based medicine. They usually include summarized consensus statements on best practice in healthcare. A healthcare provider is obliged to know the medical guidelines of their profession, and has to decide whether to follow the recommendations of a guideline for an individual treatment.
A crash cart or code cart or "MAX cart" is a set of trays/drawers/shelves on wheels used in hospitals for transportation and dispensing of emergency medication/equipment at site of medical/surgical emergency for life support protocols (ACLS/ALS) to potentially save someone's life. The cart carries instruments for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and other medical supplies while also functioning as a support litter for the patient.
The Joint Commission is a United States-based nonprofit tax-exempt 501(c) organization that accredits more than 22,000 US health care organizations and programs. The international branch accredits medical services from around the world.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is one of twelve agencies within the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The agency is headquartered in North Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.. It was established as the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) in 1989 as a constituent unit of the Public Health Service (PHS) to enhance the quality, appropriateness, and effectiveness of health care services and access to care by conducting and supporting research, demonstration projects, and evaluations; developing guidelines; and disseminating information on health care services and delivery systems.
National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) is a database of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and related documents. As of July 2, 2018, it will no longer be updated with new content, and it will no longer be available online as of July 18, 2018. As stated on its announcement page on June 18, 2018, federal funding is no longer available for it The entire content of the NGC is now available free of charge at The Alliance for the Implementation of Clinical Practice Guidelines. This site will begin uploading more current references in April 2020.
Patient safety is a discipline that emphasizes safety in health care through the prevention, reduction, reporting and analysis of error and other types of unnecessary harm that often lead to adverse patient events. The frequency and magnitude of avoidable adverse events, often known as patient safety incidents, experienced by patients was not well known until the 1990s, when multiple countries reported significant numbers of patients harmed and killed by medical errors. Recognizing that healthcare errors impact 1 in every 10 patients around the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) calls patient safety an endemic concern. Indeed, patient safety has emerged as a distinct healthcare discipline supported by an immature yet developing scientific framework. There is a significant transdisciplinary body of theoretical and research literature that informs the science of patient safety with mobile health apps being a growing area of research.
A Patient Safety Organization (PSO) is a group, institution, or association that improves medical care by reducing medical errors. Common functions of patient safety organizations are data collection, analysis, reporting, education, funding, and advocacy. A PSO differs from a Federally designed Patient Safety Organization (PSO), which provides health care providers in the U.S. privilege and confidentiality protections for efforts to improve patient safety and the quality of patient care delivery
Bernard Lown was a Lithuanian-American cardiologist and inventor. Lown was the original developer of the direct current defibrillator for cardiac resuscitation, and the cardioverter for correcting rapid disordered heart rhythms. He introduced a new use for the drug lidocaine to control heartbeat disturbances.
Health services research (HSR) became a burgeoning field in North America in the 1960s, when scientific information and policy deliberation began to coalesce. Sometimes also referred to as health systems research or health policy and systems research (HPSR), HSR is a multidisciplinary scientific field that examines how people get access to health care practitioners and health care services, how much care costs, and what happens to patients as a result of this care. HSR utilizes all qualitative and quantitative methods across the board to ask questions of the healthcare system. It focuses on performance, quality, effectiveness and efficiency of health care services as they relate to health problems of individuals and populations, as well as health care systems and addresses wide-ranging topics of structure, processes, and organization of health care services; their use and people's access to services; efficiency and effectiveness of health care services; the quality of healthcare services and its relationship to health status, and; the uses of medical knowledge.
The German Agency for Quality in Medicine (AEZQ) - in German "Ärztliches Zentrum für Qualität in der Medizin (ÄZQ)", established in 1995 and located in Berlin, co-ordinates healthcare quality programmes with special focus on evidence-based medicine, medical guidelines, patient empowerment, patient safety programs, and quality management.
The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (PSQIA): Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law 109–41 (text)(PDF), 42 U.S.C. ch. 6A subch. VII part C, established a system of patient safety organizations and a national patient safety database. To encourage reporting and broad discussion of adverse events, near misses, and dangerous conditions, it also established privilege and confidentiality protections for Patient Safety Work Product. The PSQIA was introduced by Sen. Jim Jeffords [I-VT]. It passed in the Senate July 21, 2005 by unanimous consent, and passed the House of Representatives on July 27, 2005, with 428 Ayes, 3 Nays, and 2 Present/Not Voting.
The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) was an independent not-for-profit organization created in 1997 to advance the safety of health care workers and patients, and disseminate strategies to prevent harm. In May 2017, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and NPSF began working together as one organization.
The Improvement Science Research Network (ISRN) is a research network for academics and physicians who are conducting studies in the new medical field of improvement science.
Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) refers to a set of surveys that ask patients to report on their health care experiences. The surveys are free to anyone who wants to use them. They focus on aspects of healthcare quality that patients find important and are well-equipped to assess, such as the communication skills of providers and ease of access to healthcare services. To customize a standardized CAHPS survey, users can add questions on a variety of topics.
Health care quality is a level of value provided by any health care resource, as determined by some measurement. As with quality in other fields, it is an assessment of whether something is good enough and whether it is suitable for its purpose. The goal of health care is to provide medical resources of high quality to all who need them; that is, to ensure good quality of life, cure illnesses when possible, to extend life expectancy, and so on. Researchers use a variety of quality measures to attempt to determine health care quality, including counts of a therapy's reduction or lessening of diseases identified by medical diagnosis, a decrease in the number of risk factors which people have following preventive care, or a survey of health indicators in a population who are accessing certain kinds of care.
Joel Judovich Nobel was an American anesthesiologist and patient safety advocate best known for founding the crash cart and ECRI Institute.
Kathryn McDonald is an American scientist who is Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins University. She serves as co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Diagnostic Excellence. McDonald previously led the Centre for Health Policy at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Her research considers what makes for high-quality and safe healthcare delivery systems.
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