Bill Berry
Bill Berry, MD, MPA, MPH, is the Senior Advisor to the Executive Director at Ariadne Labs.
Formerly the chief medical officer at Ariadne Labs, Bill oversaw the growth and development for all the research work including the Program teams: Safe Surgery, BetterBirth, and Serious Illness Care as well as the Platform teams: Informatics and Measurement, Implementation and Improvement Science, and Program Management. In addition, Bill serves as the Director of the Safe Surgery Program and oversees the specific research and execution of the program.
Bill is also a Surgical Consultant to the Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard Medical Institutions and serves as the Boston Program Director of the “Safe Surgery Saves Lives” initiative with the World Health Organization’s Patient Safety Program. For the last eight years, Bill has been a faculty member the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in collaborative projects focused on improving the safety of surgical patients. Prior to these roles, Bill spent seventeen years in practice as a cardiac surgeon.
Bill earned his MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and achieved his board certification in general surgery, thoracic surgery, and surgical critical care. He earned his MPA from Harvard Kennedy School of Government and his MPH from Harvard School of Public Health.
In the first study of country-level impact of the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist, Scotland saw a 36.6 percent reduction in post-surgical deaths since implementing the checklist as part of a national health safety program. The findings, reported in the April 17 British Journal of Surgery, are based on an analysis of 6.8 million operations performed… Continue reading Hospital deaths after surgery fell by a third following the launch of Surgical Safety Checklist in Scotland
For immediate release: Monday, November 5, 2018 BOSTON – Time, flexibility and engagement are the keys to successfully implementing patient safety initiatives at scale, according to new recommendations published today for policy makers at the hospital, hospital association, state and national levels. The recommendations emerge from a new study published in Health Affairs Monday of… Continue reading Study offers recommendations for scaling patient safety initiatives
Ten years ago, a team of medical experts were convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) to achieve a simple yet daunting goal. The WHO wanted to make surgery safer for everyone, everywhere. Not only that, the approach needed to be inexpensive and easy enough to impact millions of lives, in all medical settings. It… Continue reading Ten years later, Surgical Safety Checklist delivers better care for millions
Hospitals, clinics, health care associations, and hospital systems are continually exploring new ways to strengthen patient safety. Ariadne Labs and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Executive and Continuing Professional Education are collaborating to offer a new custom course, Creating High Impact Tools to Improve Clinical Effectiveness, to enable organizations to create and use checklists for better quality… Continue reading Ariadne and HSPH offer new custom course on checklist design and use for quality and safety
Safe Surgery/Safe Systems team on a new tool, Checklist Performance Observation for Improvement (CheckPOINT), to assess the effectiveness of Checklist implementation and help facilities identify areas for improvement.
The Delivery Decisions Initiative publishes on the feasibility, acceptability, and safety of the TeamBirth care process in Birth.
A study of the TeamBirth model, created to enhance the safety and dignity of childbirth care, found it improved communication and teamwork between clinicians and patients.