San Diego Center for Patient Safety
The San Diego Center for Patient Safety is a policy research center that focuses upon analysis of patient safety issues, broadly construed.
The Center is unique, assessing patient safety issues in the United States and around the world through a policy lens. Although there have been important clinically-oriented efforts to promote safety, approaches assessing broader social policy factors influencing patient safety have not garnered as much attention.
Because these factors influencing patient safety do not confine themselves to a single discipline, the efforts of the San Diego Center for Patient Safety encompass use of inter- and cross-disciplinary tools and perspectives to systemically assess and address patient safety issues. These include approaches from medicine, law, policy analysis, public health, economics, and social science.
Director
The Center Director is Bryan A. Liang, MD, PhD, JD, Professor of Anesthesiology, who is also Shapiro Distinguished Professor of Health Law and Executive Director, Institute of Health Law Studies, California Western School of Law. Dr. Liang serves as a member of the Healthcare Safety and Quality Improvement Study Section, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, as well as the Research Program Committee of the National Patient Safety Foundation.
Research and Policy Activities
Some of the center’s areas of interest and publications are linked below.
Testimony and White Papers
San Diego Health Policy Conference
The San Diego Center for Patient Safety and the Institute of Health Law Studies have jointly convened the San Diego Health Policy Conference annually since 2004. The most recent San Diego Health Policy Conference was Emerging Markets and Global Health, held on March 23, 2012.
Past San Diego Health Policy conferences include:
- Public-Private Partnerships in Global Health. (Proceedings published in: J Comm Biotech 2011;17(3)).
- Pharmaceutical Crime: Investigating and Prosecuting Drug Diversion and Counterfeiting (Proceedings published in: J Biolaw Bus. 2010;13(1&2)).
- Bio-Preparedness—Issues in Biowarfare and Pandemic Response (Proceedings published in: J Biolaw Bus. 2009;12(3)).
- Legal and Medical Issues in Emergencies and Disasters (Proceedings published in: J Biolaw Bus. 2008;11(4)).
- Safety Issues and Biologic Drugs (Proceedings published in: J Biolaw Bus. 2007;10(4)).
- Crime, Terrorism, and the Medicine Supply: Issues in a Global Marketplace (Proceedings published in: J Biolaw Bus. 2006;9(4)).
- International Drug Importation: Issues in Public Policy, Patient Safety, and the Public Health (Proceedings published in: Cal West Int'l Law J. 2005;36(1)).