Foundation News
The Doctors Company Foundation Honors the Life and Legacy of Patient Safety Luminary Lucian Leape, MD
We are deeply saddened by the passing earlier this year of Lucian Leape, MD, a giant in healthcare who is widely considered the parent of the modern patient safety movement. Dr. Leape devoted four decades of his life and career to raising awareness of the magnitude of preventable medical harm and, more importantly, to building communities and mechanisms for action to eliminate harm to patients and the workforce.
Dr. Leape also left his mark as a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Quality of Health Care in America Committee, which published the seminal works in the patient safety movement, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System (2000) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001). He was the Founding Chairman of the Lucian Leape Institute (LLI)—which was formed in 2007 by the National Patient Safety Foundation and is now a key program at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement—providing a strategic vision for improving patient safety. He was an active member of the think tank bearing his name through the remainder of his life.
The Doctors Company Foundation has been a steadfast and proud supporter of LLI for over 15 years, funding essential programming, including the widely adopted tool RCA2: Improving Root Cause Analyses and Actions to Prevent Harm. The Foundation has also supported the annual LLI keynote plenary, which this year will be hosted at the IHI Forum in Anaheim, California.
The Doctors Company Foundation’s support for the 2025 IHI Forum will also feature tribute programming devoted to Dr. Leape’s indelible influence that will continue to shape the industry’s commitment to patient safety for generations. While we mourn the loss of a remarkable mentor, colleague, and friend, we celebrate the gift of his life and career.
The Doctor’s Advocate is published by The Doctors Company to advise and inform its members about loss prevention and insurance issues.
The guidelines suggested in this newsletter are not rules, do not constitute legal advice, and do not ensure a successful outcome. They attempt to define principles of practice for providing appropriate care. The principles are not inclusive of all proper methods of care nor exclusive of other methods reasonably directed at obtaining the same results.
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