Lauren Lollini Salutes Joe Perz and the CDC DHQP
Quality Standards and Safety Team Leader
for the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
I have held a special place in my heart for Dr. Joe Perz of the CDC for the last 5 years. Even though we have not met in person, we were introduced in a very peculiar way. You see, Joe was one of the first on the scene to investigate a potential outbreak in Colorado in the spring of 2009. The CDC was called in when it was determined there were two reported cases of hepatitis C from individuals who had surgeries at the same hospital just a day or two apart.
I was one of those two patients. I am eternally grateful to Joe and his colleagues for not only getting to the heart of the outbreak and allowing a broken system to be mended but for offering me a sense of understanding about how I had gotten infected. Along the way, several other healthcare professionals with whom I was in contact scoffed at my insistence that I had been infected during my healthcare procedure—and that many other patients had, too. Ever since this first unusual “meeting,” I have followed the tremendous work of Joe Perz and the CDC’s extraordinary Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion (DHQP). I’m a fan!
Read more
