Drs. Stephen Berry and Samantha Pitts were honored this morning at the 11th Annual JHM Quality, Safety, and Service Summit sponsored by the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality in Turner Auditorium.
Dr. Stephen Berry, associate professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Vice Chair for Quality, Safety and Service, received the Inaugural Sean Berenholtz Award in recognition of his leadership, mentorship, scholarship, compassion, and unwavering commitment to improving healthcare safety and quality. This award was named in honor of Dr. Sean Berenholtz, an esteemed professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine who helped found the Armstrong Institute and passed away in 2024. Dr. Berry has led many collaborative, multidisciplinary projects to address a wide range of quality and safety challenges. This includes an initiative to improve provider communication by providing chairs at the bedside that has led to publications and has already been adopted by several outside academic centers. He has also worked with the Department of Surgery faculty and residents, Epic builders, clinical documentation specialists, and analytics teams to create universal progress note templates to standardize documentation for accuracy and efficiency.
Dr. Samantha Pitts, assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Associate Vice Chair for Ambulatory Quality and Safety, and the CancelRx Implementation and Evaluation Team received the E. Robert Feroli Award for Excellence in Medication Safety in recognition of their work resulting in significant and sustainable systems changes that have improved the safety and quality of the medication-use process. This award commemorates the innumerable ways Dr. “Bob” Feroli has made patients safer at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, throughout Johns Hopkins Health system, and across the world. The goal of the project is to evaluate and implement CancelRx, a functionality that reduces medication errors by improving communication between prescribers and outpatient pharmacies regarding medication changes.
The CancelRx Implementation and Evaluation Team (members of the DOM are in bold)
- Samantha Pitts, MD, MPH, team leader
- Noah Barash, MSc
- Allen R. Chen, MD, PhD, MHS
- Leo Dorissaint
- Elaine Giletta, MHS
- Peter Green, MD
- Joyce L. Jones, MD, MS
- Danny Lee, MD
- Howard Levy, MD
- Matthew Lengel, PharmD, MS
- Andrew Maslen
- Nicole Mollenkopf, PharmD, MBA
- Jessica Schwartz, MD, MHS
- Bridgette A. Thomas, PharmD
- Taylor Woodruff, PharmD
- Yushi Yang, PhD
- Sadaf Kazi, PhD
