National patient safety award for Sanjay Saint

Just days after becoming a Professor Emeritus of Internal Medicine at the U-M Medical School, Sanjay Saint, M.D., M.P.H., has been recognized for his impact on patient safety with one of the nation’s top awards in that field. 

As a recipient of a John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award in the Individual Achievement category, he was recognized by Joint Commission, an independent, evidence-based standards setting organization for patient care and the National Quality Forum.

The Eisenberg Awards, named in honor of the late John M. Eisenberg, M.D., M.B.A., a leading advocate for healthcare quality improvement, recognize major achievements by individuals and organizations that are improving patient safety and healthcare quality in innovative and measurable ways.

Saint was a member of the U-M faculty, with a joint appointment at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, for most of his career. He developed a specialty in studying healthcare-associated infections, especially catheter-associated urinary tract infections. 

Over the past 25 years, he led a team that designed, deployed and disseminated methods for reducing these potentially dangerous and costly infections among patients in hospitals and nursing homes. He also founded and led the VA/U-M Patient Safety Enhancement Program, and was a founding member of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

After showing that their methods could dramatically reduce CAUTI rates, Saint’s team launched bladdersafe.org, to share evidence-based resources for safe and beneficial use of bladder management tools and techniques. 

Saint recently became senior vice president of Internal Medicine at Northwell Health in New York, and chair of the Department of Medicine at Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Medical Center, North Shore University Hospital (NSUH) and the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, where he has been named the David J. Greene Professor of Medicine.