Read on to find out more about his visit courtesy of Children's Medical Center of Dallas...

Dennis Quaid at the news conference with Pamela Arora, Children's CIO, in background.

Film star Dennis Quaid was in front of the cameras for a different reason Tuesday, July 22. He was at Children's for a press conference to speak on medication errors and to raise public awareness of the need for the United States medical system as a whole to adopt state-of-the-art medication safety systems such as the one at Children's, which was again recently named one of the "Most Wired" hospitals in the country.

The press conference followed a tour by Quaid and his wife Kimberly of the medication verification safety system, where he met with a patient, Kaitlen Bell, and her parents Sylvia and Jerald, along with physicians and clinicians who are involved in many patient and medication safety initiatives.

The Quaids toured Children's as part of his public awareness campaign following the near fatal medication error to their infant twins after their admission to a Los Angeles hospital for a staph infection; they were mistakenly given massive overdoses of heparin.

"That mistake could have been avoided if they had a system in place" like Children's Medical Center does, Quaid said. He likened the medication verification system at Children's to the aviation industry's safety innovations of "auto-pilot, color-coded radar and GPS," calling the medication safety verification system "a back-up that saves lives."

"Our goal and Children's is to reduce the impact of human error in a medical situation," Quaid told the media.

Children's is the first hospital the Quaids have toured following their children's medication error, which spurred the establishment of The Quaid Foundation, which is dedicated to "helping to minimize the impact of human error in patient medical care," the Web site www.thequaidfoundation.org states. "We also strive to make the public aware of which medical facilities are vigilant about operating at the highest standard, so that patients may make a more informed decision as to where to receive their medical care."