Paul Barach, B.Sc., MD, MPH, Maj. (ret.), is a board-certified Anesthesiologist, with fellowship training in Cardiac Anesthesia, and Critical Care medicine, at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School where he trained and practiced. He is Director of Strategic Planning for Patient Safety, Associate Professor Department of Anesthesiology, and Associate Dean for Patient Safety and Quality Improvement at the University of Miami. He led the effort in Florida to create the Florida Patient Safety Corporation. This effort led to a state wide near miss reporting program, mandatory patient safety training for all health care providers and requirement for hospital reporting of patient quality indicators. He established the Center for Patient Safety and Simulation at the University of Miami-Jackson Memorial Hospital.

He spent 5 years in the Army and Special Forces focusing on trauma care, safety science, injury control, team training, and medical simulation. He later completed a Masters in Public Health, with emphasis on injury epidemiology and safety science. He is board certified in Anesthesiology and Critical Care, and has authored over 100 articles, book chapters and other reports. He created and chaired the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS) Patient Safety taskforce that designed the first statewide patient safety curriculum. He has been involved in designing simulation and team training for the last 5 years, and was recently awarded a $2 million grant to design and evaluate team training for the Department of Defense.

He was a guest member of the Harvard Kennedy School for Error Prevention Executive Session, and a member of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Examiners Program, and has chaired and co-chaired several national and international meetings on patient safety. He was editor of the journal Quality and Safety in Healthcare from 2001-2004 and sits on several medical journal boards. He wrote the background position paper for the Institute of Medicine Patient Safety: Data Standards report on designing effective national adverse event reporting systems.