Roundtable: Sepsis Program Performance Improvement - Part 1

Pat Posa RN, BSN, MSA, CCRN, FAAN, is the Quality and Safety Program Manager for the Hospital Medicine Safety Consortium (HMS), providing clinical oversight for their quality improvement work. Before that, she was the Quality and Patient Safety Program Manager for the Adult Hospitals at Michigan Medicine. In her role, she was responsible for the development, measurement, and sustainability of the Adult Hospitals’ Quality and Patient Safety program. Pat was previously a Quality Excellence Leader for St. Joseph Mercy Health System in Southeastern Michigan, leading initiatives to reduce hospital-acquired conditions, improve patient outcomes for critically ill patients, and reduce readmissions.

She received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Wayne State University and her Masters in Administration from Central Michigan University. Pat has a strong interest in sepsis and critical care. In her 44 years of practice, Pat has held various roles in healthcare in the hospital, ambulatory setting, and health plans, including manager of inpatient critical care units, Director of Nursing, and administrator of an outpatient multispecialty/primary care clinic.

Pat has been involved in many quality and patient safety programs, such as hospital and system-wide sepsis management programs and a statewide Keystone ICU patient safety initiative. She has been faculty for multiple state and national clinical collaboratives including the Surviving Sepsis Campaign Phase IV Collaborative, the national project on Comprehensive Unit Safety Program (CUSP) for Mechanically Ventilated Patients, and the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s ICU Liberation Collaborative. Pat has been a member and co-chair of SCCM’s ICU Liberation Committee. Through Pat’s leadership, St. Joseph Mercy Hospital was awarded the HHS/Critical Care Societies Outstanding Leadership in Eliminating CLABSI and VAP in 2011. She was inducted as a fellow into the American Academy of Nursing in 2013. Pat was also awarded the Michigan Hospital Association Quality and Patient Safety Leadership Award in 2017. Pat has published many articles in both clinical and quality journals. She lectures and consults extensively nationally on sepsis, various critical care topics, patient safety, and quality topics.