CEO to serve on expert technical panel
Charleston, WV - The West Virginia Medical Institute Chief Executive Officer John C. Wiesendanger in November was selected to serve as an expert for a three-year national project to help reduce blood-stream infections in intensive care units.
Wiesendanger was one of 20 health care professionals drafted to serve on the technical expert panel to advise the national initiative that involves at least 10 states and several hundred hospitals.
He will attend the first meeting in January in Rockville, Md., which is the headquarters of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). In October, AHRQ awarded nearly $3 million to the Health Research & Educational Trust to implement a patient safety program to help prevent infections related to the use of central line catheters, which are often referred to as central venous catheters.
Central-line catheters are tubes placed into a large vein in the neck, chest or groin to administer medication or fluids or to collect blood samples. About 250,000 cases of these bloodstream infections occur annually in hospitals in the United States, and about 30,000 to 62,000 patients die as a result, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The program to reduce blood-stream infections was developed by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University and has been used in more than 100 hospitals in Michigan. The Health Research & Educational Trust is an affiliate of the American Hospital Association.