Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. - The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations today recognized Norma Lang, R.N., Ph.D., for her leadership role in promoting the use of performance measures to improve health care services by naming her the individual winner of the 2001 Ernest A. Codman Award.

The Philadelphia resident work to identify standards and measures to evaluate the quality of nursing care is used to guide nursing policy throughout the world. This nursing quality model - known as the Lang Model - has been adopted in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Named for the physician regarded in health care as the "father of outcomes measurement," the Ernest A. Codman Award showcases the effective use of performance measurement, thereby enhancing knowledge and encouraging the use of performance measurement to improve the quality of health care. A panel of national experts in quality measurement and improvement selects recipients of the award.

"The Joint Commission salutes Dr. Lang for her superb efforts in enhancing the quality of care for patients," says Dennis S. Oeary, M.D., president, Joint Commission. "The accomplishments of Dr. Lang underscore the productive innovations that can be achieved by measuring and using outcomes to improve patient care processes."

"I would like to share this honor with all practicing professional nurses who are the minute-by-minute determiners of the quality care received by patients," says Dr. Lang. "To recognize me is to recognize the essential contributions made by more than two million nurses in this country. It is a great honor to follow previous awardees who are considered the great leaders in the field of quality health care. It bodes well for nursing to have a nurse - and thus nursing - recognized as major contributors to the quality of health care."

Dr. Lang, who pioneered the nursing profession first quality assurance efforts in the 1970s, has worked for the past decade to develop a scientific system that serves as a common tool to describe and compare nursing practice across nations. The International Classification for Nursing Practice Project aims to develop a standardized vocabulary and classification of nursing diagnoses, nursing interventions and nursing outcomes which can be used in both electronic and paper records to describe and compare nursing practice across clinical settings around the world. Classification represents a somewhat new idea in nursing and is expected to have a major impact on the profession.

"It is this work that will be Dr. Lang greatest legacy for nursing as it will have worldwide influence for the future and will provide the basis for research globally," says Sally Sample, R.N., M.N., member of the Joint Commission Board of Commissioners.

A professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Lang is also a senior research fellow in the Annenberg Center for Public Policy and a senior fellow in the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics. She is an advisor and faculty member for the Wharton Johnson & Johnson Program in Management for Nurse Executives and heads the Penn Macy Institute to Advance Academic Nursing Practice.

Dr. Lang holds national awards and fellowships with the American Nurses Association, American Academy of Nursing, American Association of Colleges of Nursing and Institute of Medicine. She also has been recognized as an honorary fellow in the Royal College of Nursing in London, an historic honor for her internationally renowned work.

The Joint Commission will formally present the Codman Award to Dr. Lang on Thursday, November 8, during the National Conference on Quality and Safety in Health Care in Chicago.

Organization award winners include: behavioral health - Alternate Family Care, Sunrise, Florida; home care - Carolinas Medical Center, Charlotte, North Carolina; hospital - St. John Riverside Hospital, Yonkers, New York; and network - Cleveland Clinic Health System, Cleveland, Ohio.