“When her 18-month-old daughter Josie died after a series of medical mistakes at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore six years ago, Sorrel King was consumed by grief and anger, wanting to destroy the hospital and even end her own life. But with three other children to live for, she and her husband Tony decided they had to help fix a broken system.
‘We had to do something good that would prevent this from ever happening to a child again,’ Ms. King says. When the hospital offered a financial settlement, Ms. King, a former fashion designer who had become a stay-at-home mom, asked Johns Hopkins to take some of the money back to start a children’s safety program. She also created the Josie King Foundation to fund safety initiatives at other hospitals. Now, to take the message to a broader audience of both consumers and medical professionals, she is launching a new Web site, josieking.org, with her own blog on patient safety; an online community where families can post their medical-error experiences and provide emotional support; advice from medical and legal experts on how to avoid error and deal with it when occurs; and resources for hospitals seeking to improve safety.”
Read the Wall Street Journal article on the Josie King Foundation here.