Lawrence F Muscarella, PhD, is the president of LFM Healthcare Solutions, LLC, an independent quality improvement and healthcare safety company that he founded in 2013.
Lawrence F. Muscarella, Ph.D., is an independent healthcare safety expert who for more than 30 years has advised healthcare facilities, device manufacturers and consumers about the safety and designs of medical instruments, aseptic techniques, and the causes and prevention of healthcare-associated infections, among other related topics.
In 2013, he founded LFM Healthcare Solutions, LLC, a healthcare safety and quality improvement company that educates the public about these and other hospital safety topics. Dr. Muscarella’s knowledge and expertise are internationally recognized.
Also in 2013, Dr. Muscarella founded “Discussions in Infection Control,” which is the most replete and independent blog dedicated to infection prevention in healthcare settings, featuring more than 150 of Dr. Muscarella’s original articles, research and opinions.
Dr. Muscarella received his Ph.D. in bioengineering, in 1990, from the University of Pennsylvania (the School of Engineering and Applied Science; Philadelphia, PA).
He received a B.S. in physics in 1983 from Ursinus College (Collegeville, PA), with minors in philosophy and biology.
After completing a one-year post-doctoral fellowship researching the effects of ultrasound on blood flow at the Temple University School of Medicine (Department of Diagnostic Imaging, Philadelphia, PA), Dr. Muscarella worked as a project engineer, from 1991 to 1994, at the ECRI Institute (Plymouth Meeting, PA). During his time at ECRI, he evaluated the safety of medical devices with a focus on infection prevention in healthcare settings.
From 1995 to 2013, Dr. Muscarella was the Director of Research and Development and the Chief of Infection Control at Custom Ultrasonics, Inc. (Ivyland, PA), a company that manufactures and sells FDA-regulated automated devices for the cleaning and disinfection of flexible endoscopes.
Discussing his expertise on device safety and healthcare-associated infections, The New York Times wrote that Dr. Muscarella “scours medical device reports submitted to the F.D.A. and has often been the first to identify infection risks.”[1]
For instance, Dr. Muscarella was the first to detect and publicize certain hospital safety risks prior to the FDA or the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notifying the public about the health concern.[2] Notable examples include him advising the public more than a decade ago about duodenoscopes posing an emerging, global risk of cross-infecting patients with deadly “superbugs,” particularly carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales (“CRE”) and related multidrug-resistant organisms.
He also was the first to identify and publicize the risk of gastroscopes infecting patients with CRE and related superbugs despite them being cleaned and disinfected (“reprocessed”) according to manufacturer instructions; and along with a co-author, he was the first to publish the risk of reprocessed flexible bronchoscopes similarly infecting patients with CRE and related multidrug-resistant organisms.
A few final examples, Dr. Muscarella was the first to publish that environmental surfaces (e.g., a medical facility’s tap water) can pose a risk of harboring and infecting patients with antibiotic-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa; and to advise the public about an association (globally, not only in the U.S.) between patient exposures to heater-cooler devices (used during open-heart surgery) and life-threatening infections of nontuberculous mycobacteria.
His work is frequently referenced in national and overseas infection control guidelines, federal guidance documents, and peer-reviewed articles. Actions by federal and state agencies to improve device safety and prevent healthcare-associated infection have been based, solely or in part, on his published research.
In recent years, Dr. Muscarella has served as a consultant and/or expert witness in more than 30 legal cases involving healthcare-associated infections, violations of aseptic technique, and/or device-related adverse events (among other types of injuries).[3] For a number of these cases, he provided testimony to courts, both in the U.S. and Canada.
His work and research have been discussed on the front pages of several U.S. newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Seattle Times, The Denver Post, Investor’s Business Daily, The San Juan Weekly, and The Allentown Morning Call, among others.
Dr. Muscarella’s work, opinions, and efforts to improve patient safety have also been discussed in USA Today, Bloomberg Business, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Boston Globe, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, The York Dispatch, The Winston-Salem Journal, and The Sacramento Bee, among other newspapers.
He has been interviewed by and/or his work discussed on CNN, NBC’s The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelly, Huffington Post Live, Al Jazeera, and Wall Street Journal Live, among many other television news outlets and broadcast shows.
During the past 30 years, Dr. Muscarella has authored more than 200 articles on the causes and prevention of bacterial outbreaks in hospitals, the designs of medical devices, risk management and root causes analyses, and both the disinfection and sterilization of reusable medical devices.
Many of his peer-reviewed articles on infection prevention and device-related harms were published in The American Journal of Infection Control, Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, The Journal of Hospital Infection, Gastroenterology Nursing, Chest, Nature Medicine, Endoscopy, Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and the World Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases, among other peer-reviewed medical journals.
Dr. Muscarella has lectured in Europe, Canada, and at educational conferences hosted throughout the U.S.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The New York Times. “Why Are These Medical Instruments So Tough to Sterilize?” August 6, 2019.
[2] “Discussions in Infection Control” — https://lfm-hcs.com/firsts/
[3] “Discussions in Infection Control” — https://lfm-hcs.com/legal-opinions/
Contact — Office: 215-412-4088; Email: Larry@LFM-HCS.com
Confidentiality — Click here.
C.V. — Contact Dr. Muscarella to receive a complete copy of his current curriculum vitae.
Experience — Dr. Muscarella’s experience may be read by clicking here.
Peer-Reviewed Publications: Many of Dr. Muscarella’s published papers may be viewed by clicking here
Disclaimer: LFM Healthcare Solutions, LLC, is entirely and exclusively responsible for and owns any and all of the content of this blog and website (Discussions in Infection Control), whether the content was posted currently, in the future or in the past. All rights are reserved.