ECRI announces three winners and three finalists of its 2022 Alerts Impact Award for excellence in recall management. ECRI presents its annual award to members of its Alerts Workflow solution who have demonstrated strong success in implementing recall management programs throughout their healthcare organizations. 

“With continuing shortages in supplies, equipment, and healthcare workers, it is increasingly challenging to keep up with recalls that demand swift action. As an enterprise-wide recall management partner, our close collaboration with hospitals can be vital to ensuring patient safety,” says Andrew Furman, MD, ECRI’s vice president of clinical evidence and safety solutions. “We congratulate the winners of this year’s award for demonstrating improved outcomes, increased efficiencies and processes, and excellence in safety and compliance.” 

The following organizations were announced as winners and finalists at ECRI’s May 2022 Alerts Workflow User Group Meeting. 

ECRI 2022 Winners

  • Eskenazi Health—Indianapolis: Expedient Resolution of Backlog Alerts During a Recent Cyberattack | 2021 and 2022 Winner
  • St. Luke’s Health System—Boise, Idaho: Steady, Systematic Recall Resolution Success | 2021 and 2022 Winner
  • ThedaCare Medical Center—Appleton, Wis.: Extending Alerts Workflow to Pharmacy and Lab Teams for Increased Compliance
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2022 Finalists

  • The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center—Columbus: Right Product, Right Place, Right Time
  • CommonSpirit Health—Erlanger, Ky.: Using ECRI’s Alerts Workflow for Action-oriented Communication
  • The University of Vermont Medical Center—Burlington, Ky: Leveraging of Alerts Workflow Analytics Helps Improve Recall Response Times

“We congratulate our winners and all of our submitters for taking the time to share their impact stories,” says Deb Dominianni, director, healthcare product alerts, ECRI. “The tireless efforts of these and other recall management teams help to protect patients as the industry grapples with unprecedented challenges related to COVID, supply and staff shortages, cybersecurity, and ongoing mergers and acquisitions.” 

ECRI’s Alerts Workflow is an enterprise-wide system used in supply chain, clinical engineering, IT, pharmacy, lab, and clinical departments, as well as ancillary care points. It enables healthcare providers to increase their efficiency in monitoring and managing thousands of medical device and pharmaceutical alerts, in many cases weeks and months in advance of FDA recall notifications. Members report a 50% to 90% reduction in resolution times. 

The Alerts Workflow system can standardize and automatically match recalls to inventory, segregating and highlighting those alerts that are of highest relevance and impact. Personalized dashboards also track recall activities in real time, facilitating greater collaboration across departments, facilities, and health system networks.

An interdisciplinary team at ECRI and jury of peers judged the 2022 Alerts Impact Award submission entries based on the demonstrated impact and overall effectiveness of recall management implementations across the organization.