Pronovost's new mission: Convincing health systems to tell a different story

When someone hears the name Peter Pronovost, they think of checklists. Specifically, they think of the patient safety checklist he launched at Johns Hopkins Hospital after the tragic death of a young patient from a catheter infection in 2001. The checklist helped ensure healthcare workers were consistently following basic protocols, like washing their hands. It has helped reduce hospital-acquired infections due to catheters by 85% since 1999. Pronovost, M.D., who recently began a gig as University Hospitals’ chief clinical transformation officer after a brief stint at UnitedHealthcare, has a new mission: to help change the narrative of healthcare organizations to believe that, even as a high-risk industry, zero patient deaths are actually possible.