Johns Hopkins Creates Patient Safety Institute

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Johns Hopkins Medicine says it is establishing a patient safety institute that will study how to reduce medical errors, hospital infections, health disparities and other types of preventable harm.

Johns Hopkins announced Thursday the establishment of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. The institute is being funded by a $10 million gift from C. Michael Armstrong, the chairman of the board of trustees of Johns Hopkins Medicine and retired chairman of Comcast and AT&T.

The institute will oversee all patient safety efforts, and Johns Hopkins will serve as a learning laboratory for the institute.

Johns Hopkins says hundreds of thousands of deaths each year in the United States are attributed to medical errors, diagnostic errors and hospital-acquired infections.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)