Primary Care and Health-Care Delivery
Primary Care and Delivery
Primary Care and Patient Safety
Our program in primary care and health-care delivery addresses how to improve clinical decisions, quality of care and patient safety. We study how to develop and implement best clinical practices through clinical guidelines and decision support; how to measure and improve the quality of care; and to develop measures that promote patient safety.
CHP/PCOR Director Douglas K. Owens is an expert in decision theory, cost-effectiveness of preventive and treatment interventions for HIV, treatment strategies for cardiovascular disease and cancer and the evaluation of public health interventions. He is also the vice chairperson of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a volunteer panel of nationally recognized experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine that impacts virtually every primary care patient and practiced in the United States.
CHP/PCOR's Executive Director Kathryn M. McDonald has devoted much of her career to helping public health policymakers understand the importance of health-care quality and patient safety. A member of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality — a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Sevices, and the lead federal agency charged with improving the safety and quality of America's health-care system. McDonald helped write a landmark report by the National Academy of Medicine, the medical arm of the National Academy of Sciences, that found that most Americans will experience at least one misdiagnosis in their lifetime. The report found that despite dramatic improvements in patient safety over the last 15 years, diagnostic errors remain the critical blind spot of health-care providers.
