PPAHS Mission

Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety (PPAHS) is an advocacy group dedicated to improving patient health and safety. PPAHS seeks to advance key patient health and safety initiatives that significantly impact patient lives and to do so in a prescriptive and practical manner by:

• Endorsing and publicizing health expert opinion that is supported by healthcare organizations and medical societies.
• Surveying healthcare professionals to determine current practices and using these responses to encourage improvement.
• Sharing best practices to encourage their spread and adoption.
• Developing safety checklists and advocating for the adoption of standards to help eliminate adverse events.

PPAHS Key Initiatives

PPAHS is engaged in the following for improving patient safety and health outcomes (please click on the links below to learn more about each initiative):

Inspiration and Individuals Behind PPAHS

PPAHS and this website is inspired by Howard , who survived 96 minutes without a heart beat. Howard’s resuscitation by volunteer paramedics and Dr Roger White at the is a truly remarkable story. Moreover, as Howard says, he owes this “fifth shot at living well” to the capnograph which encouraged his rescuers to continue their efforts and, of course, to their persistence and never-give-up attitude.

Mike Wong built this free site (yes, free! — thank you, WordPress!).  A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, he is currently on the editorial board of the , a peer-reviewed journal devoted to improving patient adherence (i.e. getting patients to take their medications as prescribed by their physicians). According to the , the problem of non-adherence as much as $290 billion annually in extra doctor visits, extra hospital admissions, extra emergency room visits, extra prescriptions … and, of course, poorer patient health … all caused by non-adherence.

Mike has been involved in a number of healthcare issues affecting patients and their friends and families — including encouraging smokers to quit in community-driven initiatives, helping pain patients receive physician-recommended treatments, and raising awareness about the dangers of hepatitis B in the Asian American community.

PPAHS very much appreciates the assistance from our board of  for helping us with our three  to improve patient safety and health outcomes — , , and .

There is passion and a desire to improve patient safety and health outcomes through technology like capnography that helped save Howard, and more knowledge and expertise like that of Bruce Goodman and Dr Roger White at the Mayo Clinic.

Hopefully, there will be more cases like Howard’s and fewer instances like that of Carly Ann Pritchard. (Ms Pritchard suffered an ankle injury and then underwent surgery to reduce lingering pain from her ankle injury. Unfortunately, although she survived surgery, she suffered brain damage because of an accidental overdose from a morphine-filled pain pump — after surgery. A California appeals court recently upheld a jury’s of about $9.9 million in damages.)