It has been ten years since my mom, Louise Batz, lost her life unnecessarily and unnaturally because of a preventable medical error. On the evening of her routine knee replacement surgery, a preventable medical error occurred because of a miscommunication between hospital staff. She passed away eleven days later. Every day since then, I’ve wondered, “What could I have done differently? What do I wish I’d known that could have helped save her life?”
Since my Mom died, we have been extremely focused on carrying out the vision of the Foundation in everything we do.
Over the past ten years, The Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation has:
- Raised over 2.5 million dollars for Patient Safety.
- We have printed and downloaded over 40,000 Batz Guides that have been sent to hospitals, patients, and families around the world.
- We have shared my Mom’s story across the United States, Canada, Europe, and South America.
- We have officially launched Batz Foundation Europe
- We have designed guides for pediatric patients, pediatric NICU patients, pediatric transplant patients, adult transplants and breast cancer patients
- We have participated in and led awareness campaigns across the globe
- We have designed apps for mobile devices
- We met bill Clinton and had a chance to share my mom's story
- We have funded patient safety research and scholarships for nurses and doctors
For the past several months, the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation has been in conversation with the University Health System in San Antonio to embrace the development of a Patient and Family Resource Center at University Hospital. This Patient and Family Resource Center will offer support services and access to resources and education that empowers patients and their families, increases health literacy, and leads to improved patient outcomes.
The components of this new Patient and Family Resource Center at University Hospital will include prominent office space, dedicated professional staff to lead and develop this effort, and activities, resources, and training for patients, families, and healthcare professionals. The Center at University Health System will be a hub for innovation- where best practices in patient/healthcare provider education and patient safety are developed to share with other institutions.
This project has been a dream of ours for years, and we are excited that it is now becoming a reality.
While this new patient center is a primary focus in the upcoming year, we are also focused on:
- Printing and distributing Batz Guides
- Overhauling our website and creating a more mobile-friendly version of our materials for online use
- Continuing to support the research of our EMPOWER team
- And helping get Batz Europe off the ground.
So whether you can give $10.00 or $10,000, please consider supporting our work. Together we CAN reach zero preventable errors. Anybody who donates $50 or more will receive an EMPOWER bracelet.
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