Paul Barach, B.Sc., MD, MPH, Maj. (ret.), is a board-certified Anesthesiologist, with fellowship training in Cardiac Anesthesia, Critical Care medicine and human factors, at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School where he trained and practiced. He set up the Center for Safety at the University of Chicago, and founded the Center for Patient Safety and Simulation at the University of Miami Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he was Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Patient Safety. He chaired the Jackson Memorial Hospital Patient Safety Committee and was the Medical Director for Quality for 3 years. He is Associate Professor at the University of South Florida where he is advisor to Dean of College of Medicine on patient safety and simulation themes. He helped write the legislation and co-founded the state supported Florida Patient Safety Corporation. This effort led to a state wide near miss reporting program, mandatory patient safety training for all health care providers and requirement for hospital reporting of patient quality indicators. He was instrumental in setting up the Massachusetts Betsy Lehman Patient Safety Center, was member of the Massachusetts Medical Society Board of Trustees, member of the MMS Committee on Publications that oversees the New England Journal of Medicine, and was a member of the American Medical Association's senior Council on Long Range Planning and Development.
He spent 5 years in the Army focusing on safety science, injury control, team training, disaster preparedness and medical simulation. He later completed a Masters in Public Health, with emphasis on quality improvement, injury epidemiology and safety science. He is board certified in Anesthesiology and Critical Care, and has authored over 150 articles, book chapters and other reports. He has been involved in designing simulation and team training for the last 5 years, including being awarded $2 million grant to design and evaluate team training for the Department of Defense (DOD). He has received over $4 million in federal, state, and private grant funding to support patient safety research. He is consultant to the DOD /TRIcare patient safety program and helps guide the efforts on team training and hospital design. The team training project, TeamSTEPPS was awarded the 2007 Scott Myers Award for Applied Research in the Workplace by the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. He was Chief Scientific Advisor for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Safety Coordinating Center, 2004-2005 (led by NORC) and has participated on grant review panels for the NIBIB (NIH), NCRR (NIH), VA Patient Safety program, UK Department of Health Patient Safety Program, Dutch Patient Safety program, and the Stemmler Foundation.
He was a guest member of the Harvard Kennedy School for Error Prevention Executive Session, and is a member of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Examiners Program, the National Quality Forum (NQF) Healthcare Excellence Award jury, a board member of the National Board of Medical Examiners Center for Innovation (NBME), and is a member of the New York State National Advisory Panel on Patient Reporting (NYPORTS). He was elected to the Association of University Anesthesia (AUA), National Honor Society in 2005. He has been a member of the IHC Advanced Training Program (ATP) faculty, and is regular faculty at the IHI and European Forum for Quality since 2001, and has been invited to give a full day course at the IHI 2007 Annual meeting on Safe Hospital Design. He is a recipient of teaching award and Provost award for technology innovation (with David Leibowitz)from the University of Chicago, a special recognition from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), and was awarded a Macy Foundation Medical Education Fellowship. He is guest editor of special series on patient safety (with Don Berwick) at the Annals of Internal Medicine, is editor (healthcare), of Journal of Simulation and Gaming, and was the editor of the lead journal Quality and Safety in Healthcare. He has chaired and co-chaired 20 national and international meetings on quality improvement, patient safety, medical education including the upcoming 2007 Harvard Quality Colloquium. He is leading an effort for the Best Evidence Medical Education (BEME) collaborative with David Mayer on the role and impact of a safety curriculum. He is a member of the National Advisory Board, American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), Patient Safety, and Maintenance of Certification Project and developed a comprehensive patient safety curriculum for the University of Miami.
He has been involved in evaluating the role of the built environment in healthcare including being member of the American Institute of Architecture (AIA) Healthcare Guidelines Patient Safety working group, board member of the Coalition for Healthcare Research, a member of the Research Committee of the Center for Health Design. He delivered the keynote presentations at the 2005 International meeting on Human Factors and Patient Safety, the 2006 Annual meetings of the American Society of Quality (ASQ), the American Society of Healthcare Engineering (ASHE-PDC), the American Institute of Architecture (AIA), and the 2006 Healthcare Environments Research Summit, and he delivered the national review lecture on patient safety at the International Anesthesia Research Society Annual meeting in 2007. Dr. Barach has been hired to consult on the design of several hospitals including the UCSF Mission Bay Medical Complex, the DOD directed Fort Belvoir Hospitals, St Joseph Hospital in West Bend, WI, and was instrumental in the early design phases of the University of Miami hospital. He has been involved in designing several simulation centers in the US and Europe.
He has been a visiting professor in 37 Universities including 14 Universities outside the United States, including in Holland, Japan, Australia, Israel, England, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Peru, New Zealand, Canada, Denmark and Norway. He has worked extensively with the World Health Organization, and the UK National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) in advancing patient safety and quality improvement initiatives.
