Former Bellevue WA Pastor to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award for Medication Safety Efforts

(Bellevue WA)—The Neuenschwander Company of Bellevue WA is pleased to announce that its president, Mark Neuenschwander, will receive the Institute for Safe Medication Practices’ (ISMP) Lifetime Achievement Award for 2010.

The ISMP’s highest award honors individuals who, throughout their careers, have made ongoing contributions to patient safety and have had a major impact on safe medication practices.

Neuenschwander, a minister for twenty years, served as senior pastor of Bellevue’s Westminster Chapel for ten years before embarking on a new career in 1993. He is now considered by many to be the leading resource and authority on drug dispensing automation and bar-code point-of-care systems used in hospitals. For nearly two decades he has promoted their safe use and also served as a leading advocate for federal regulation requiring bar codes on all medication packaging. The former minister is a prolific author on the role of technology in medication safety, having written a series of industry-acclaimed reports for reviewing and assessing automated dispensing systems along with numerous articles in professional journals and healthcare trade publications. He has also contributed chapters for two award-winning books on medication errors and one on new technology.

Neuenschwander speaks to healthcare leaders across the country and around the world about the value of implementing bar-code technology for eliminating medical errors involving the misidentification of patients, which in turn mismatches them with medications, specimens, and treatments resulting in harm and taking lives. The Institutes of Medicine reports that nearly 7,000 lives are lost to preventable medication errors each year in America’s hospitals. Many more are lost to mistakes involving blood transfusions and specimen tracking.

Neuenschwander is the tenth recipient of ISMP’s Lifetime Achievement Award—previous winners include Lucian Leape, MD, Harvard Medical School, Kenneth N. Barker, PhD, RPh, Auburn University, and Don Berwick, MD, Head of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

The award will be presented on December 7, 2010, during the MidYear Meeting of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists in Anaheim CA, at the ISMP Annual Cheers Awards Dinner, which honors those who, through their actions over the past year, set a standard of excellence for others to follow in medication safety.

About The Neuenschwander Company: The Neuenschwander Company provides reports and consulting services for technology companies and healthcare providers across America and around the world. The company is committed to promoting and facilitating wise development and sound deployment of mediation-use automation, including drug distribution and dispensing technologies, and specializing in bar-code verification and documentation technologies for the prevention of errors at all points of care. http://www.hospitalrx.com

About ISMP: The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) is an independent, nonprofit charitable organization that works closely with healthcare practitioners and institutions, regulatory agencies, consumers, and professional organizations to provide education about medication errors and their prevention. ISMP represents more than 35 years of experience in helping healthcare practitioners keep patients safe, and continues to lead efforts to improve the medication use process. ISMP is a federally certified patient safety organization (PSO), providing healthcare practitioners and organizations with the highest level of legal protection and confidentiality for patient safety data and error reports they submit to the Institute. For more information on ISMP, or its medication safety alert newsletters and other tools for healthcare professionals and consumers, visit www.ismp.org.

Credentialed journalists are invited to attend the awards reception and dinner. If you plan to attend, please contact Renee Brehio at 704-831-8822 or rbrehio@ismp.org no later than Friday, December 3.