Jason Adelman to lead new VP&S Center for Patient Safety Science

Dear Colleagues:

Achieving the highest levels of excellence in patient safety and quality of care requires sustained effort along many fronts. One of the most promising of the new initiatives referenced in the message you received on Monday is the Center for Patient Safety Science. The new Center not only embraces the challenge of inventing the future of quality and patient safety (QPS) at Columbia and nationally, but will also draw on each of VP&S’s mission-driven strengths.

High-impact research, conducted by internal and external investigators, will drive innovation at the Center and support a rich mix of pilot projects and long-term inquiry. An in-house quality and patient safety training academy will develop a standardized curriculum for Columbia faculty, nurses, medical assistants, students, and house staff. Active engagement of our community of clinicians and scientists will ensure that our evolving culture of safety and quality touches all of our departments, locations, and services. An exciting component of the Center’s agenda will be to promote the next generation of best practices to clinicians beyond our campus through publications, media engagement, national conferences, patient advocacy groups, and symposia.

To lead the Center as its inaugural director, we are very fortunate to have on our faculty Dr. Jason Adelman, a nationally celebrated and award-winning scholar and practitioner in the field of patient safety. Jason developed the Wrong-Patient Retract-and-Reorder (RAR) Measure, the first automated measure of medical errors and the first health IT safety measure endorsed by the National Quality Forum. Jason has led multiple NIH- and AHRQ-funded research projects to rigorously test safety interventions across the lifespan, and results of his research have had far-reaching impact, leading to national and international safety recommendations and The Joint Commission National Patient Safety Goal requiring hospitals to use distinct methods of newborn identification. Dr. Adelman is vice chair for quality and patient safety in the Department of Medicine and associate professor of medicine (in biomedical informatics), as well as the Associate Chief Quality Officer for Patient Safety Research at NewYork-Presbyterian. His research has been published in multiple journals including JAMA, JAMA Internal Medicine, and JAMA Pediatrics.

Dr. Adelman’s recent honors include the 2023 John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Individual Achievement Award and the 2022 John M. Eisenberg Excellence in Mentorship Award for establishing the first federally funded patient safety research fellowship for physicians.

In his expanded role, Dr. Adelman has also been appointed the inaugural Associate Dean for Quality and Safety at VP&S, reporting directly to the two of us. He will be responsible for bringing together cutting-edge programs in research, education, and implementation to ensure that Columbia becomes a national leader in patient safety. We look forward to sharing more information about the progress of the Center for Patient Safety Science very soon. Until then, please join us in congratulating Jason and wishing him the best in this critically important new endeavor.

Sincerely,

Katrina Armstrong, MD
Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
Executive Vice President for Health and Biomedical Sciences, Columbia University

James M. McKiernan, MD
Senior Vice Dean for Clinical Affairs, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
Chief Executive Officer, ColumbiaDoctors