Peter Pronovost to Step Down As JHM's Senior Vice President for Patient Safety and Quality and Director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality

To the Johns Hopkins Medicine Community

Dear Colleagues,

We write to announce that Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., Johns Hopkins Medicine's senior vice president for patient safety and quality and director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, will be leaving Johns Hopkins Medicine in mid-January to take a new role as senior vice president for clinical strategy with UnitedHealthcare. A search will be conducted to select his successor and information regarding the transition of his responsibilities on an interim basis will be forthcoming.

A practicing critical care physician, Peter has devoted his career to making hospitals and health care safer. His leadership and commitment to working with patients, their loved ones and providers to eliminate preventable harm has greatly influenced the continuum of safety—from helping the field better understand how errors occur, to learning how factors such as organizational culture affect safety, to developing, implementing and evaluating interventions based on this knowledge to make care safer.

When Peter was named founding director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality and JHM's senior vice president for patient safety and quality in June 2011, he brought together safety and quality partners from across the university and health system who were working on patient safety solutions, including the Quality and Safety Research Group and the Center for Innovation in Quality Patient Care, where he served as medical director. Shortly after its founding, the Armstrong Institute has become a global leader in patient safety and quality research, training and practice.

Beyond any question, under Peter's stewardship the Armstrong Institute has emerged as a leader in helping to reduce errors, improve clinical outcomes and experiences, and reduce waste in health care delivery at Johns Hopkins and throughout the world. As an advisor to the World Health Organization's World Alliance for Patient Safety and through his testimonies before the U.S. Congress, Peter has been a strong advocate for patient safety issues. With Peter's guidance, the institute's unique combination of rigorous research; focus on building a culture of humility, curiosity, respect and accountability; and deep understanding of health system operations has resulted in important patient safety advances and a more rapid translation of new knowledge to the bedside.

A recipient of the AAMC's 2017 David E. Rogers Award, Peter has saved thousands of lives through his work in developing successful medical interventions that advance a culture of no harm. He developed the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) method, which emphasizes safety education, process improvement, teamwork and learning from results. More than 170 CUSP teams have been activated at Johns Hopkins Medicine, and hundreds more have been organized in hospitals internationally. The results are striking. With CUSP teams and using checklists he developed, central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) are down 80 percent in hospitals across the United States. For this work, Peter was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. He also received the MacArthur Fellowship, known popularly as the "genius grant."

Additionally, Peter was instrumental in creating Clinical Communities throughout Johns Hopkins Medicine to solve clinical service problems. There are now 30 clinical communities and many have improved results related to reduced length of stay, improved patient satisfaction and reduced red blood cell utilization—saving the health system millions of dollars annually.

During the height of the Ebola virus crisis, Peter and the Armstrong Institute partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop standardized training for health care providers transporting and caring for patients with Ebola or other highly infectious diseases.

We are extremely grateful for Peter's unparalleled contributions to advance the science of safety and improve patient outcomes and value. His efforts have helped Johns Hopkins build a framework to tackle health care's challenges head-on, ensure organizational learning and spread solutions to colleagues across Johns Hopkins Medicine and the world.

Please join us in thanking Peter for his extraordinary service and wishing him much success in the next chapter of his career.

Sincerely,

Paul B. Rothman, M.D.
Dean of the Medical Faculty
CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Ronald R. Peterson
President, Johns Hopkins Health System
EVP, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Robert A. Kasdin
Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Johns Hopkins Medicine