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.
Dr. Muscarella is an independent safety expert who advises hospitals, manufacturers and others, including the public, about medical errors, the safety of medical devices, and the causes of infections in healthcare facilities, among other topics.
His knowledge and expertise in hospital safety are internationally recognized.
In 2013 Lawrence F Muscarella, PhD, founded LFM Healthcare Solutions, LLC — an independent safety and quality improvement company that advises hospitals, manufacturers and consumers.
That same year Dr. Muscarella founded the popular blog — “Discussions in Infection Control” — which is the most replete and independent source of infection-prevention information, featuring more than 170 of Dr. Muscarella’s original articles.
From 1995 to 2013, Dr. Muscarella was the director of research and development, and the chief of infection control, for Custom Ultrasonics, Inc. In 1995, he founded the popular infection control newsletter, “The Q-Net Monthly,” whose publication ended in 2013.
From 1991 through 1994, Dr. Muscarella worked as a project engineer for the ECRI Institute (Plymouth Meeting, PA) evaluating the quality and safety of medical devices and infection control products.
In 1990 Dr. Muscarella received his Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania (the School of Engineering and Applied Science; Philadelphia, PA).
Dr. Muscarella also completed a post-doctoral fellowship in diagnostic imaging at the Temple University School of Medicine (Philadelphia, PA). In 1983 he received a B.S. in physics from Ursinus College (Collegeville, PA), with minors in philosophy and biology.
Dr. Muscarella has been interviewed by more than two dozen news media outlets and shows, including: CNN, NBC’s The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News, Huffington Post Live, Al Jazeera, and Wall Street Journal Live, among others.
Dr. Muscarella’s advice 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 advice has also appeared 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.
During the past quarter century, Dr. Muscarella has authored more than 200 articles on the causes and prevention of bacterial outbreaks in hospitals, the design and FDA-regulation of medical devices, risk management, and both the disinfection and sterilization of reusable medical devices.
Many of Dr. Muscarella’s peer-reviewed articles have been published in such medical journals as: 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.
Other articles by Dr. Muscarella were recently published in: World Journal of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (click here); World Journal of Gastroenterology (click here); Advances in Infectious Diseases (click here); and Open Epidemiology Journal (click here).
In recent years Dr. Muscarella has lectured in Europe, Canada, and at educational conferences hosted throughout the U.S.
Dr. Muscarella is a leading authority and expert who was the first to alert the public to several public health risks, including:
- 2019 (January) — Colonoscopes and the CRE superbug: First to advise the public that two patients’ exposure to a colonoscope had been recently linked to CRE infection.
- 2018 (March) — Supplemental safety measures for bronchoscopes: First to advise U.S. hospitals to consider adopting an enhanced measure to improve safety and prevent bronchoscopes (and other types of flexible endoscopes) from infecting patients with CRE and related superbugs.
- 2017 (September) —Duodenoscopes and colistin-resistant bacteria: First to warn the public that duodenoscopes had been linked to possible transmission of colistin-resistant bacteria. These bacteria can be untreatable and more dangerous than CRE. (A year later, this risk was acknowledged and publicized in a peer-reviewed study.)
- 2015 (July) — Bronchoscopes and CRE: First to warn the public that bronchoscopes also had been linked to infections of CRE in the U.S. (In 2018 this risk was described in a peer-reviewed report.)
- 2014 (June) — Heater-cooler devices and nontuberculous mycobacteria (“NTM”): First to warn the public about the association between contaminated heater-cooler devices and NTM infections among open-chest surgery patients, and that this risk was not local, but likely a national (if not global) problem.
- 2014 (October) —Duodenoscopes and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (“CRE”): First to warn the public (in a peer-reviewed article) that duodenoscopes posed an emerging risk of infecting patients with the “CRE” superbug, and that this risk was a national (and global) threat, not a local phenomenon.
- 2013 (December) — Duodenoscopes linked to “superbug” outbreaks: First to publicize that the country was in the midst of an apparent — and overlooked — “epidemic” of outbreaks of superbugs including CRE linked to duodenoscopes.
Dr. Muscarella’s knowledge and expertise in the fields of infection control, sterilization, disinfection, quality assurance, aseptic technique, regulatory affairs, marketing, medical device design and instrument reprocessing, among others, are internationally recognized.
Contact — Call | Email | Text | Skype
Confidentiality — Click here.
C.V. — Download a shortened version of Dr. Muscarella’s current curriculum vitae by clicking here.
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.