Fred Meier

I am saddened by the passing of Fred! He was a wonderful, worldly, knowledgeable and kind man. His contributions were many, but what I appreciated the most about Fred, was his genuine curiosity about the world and his eagerness to learn and live in this world.

I loved our conversations when we had them (in varied places, like New Orleans and the Dead Sea, among others.)

I will miss Fred!

Raouf Nakhleh

I am saddened by the passing of Frederick A Meier MD as Fred´s contributions to improved medical care by Pathology laboratories are well known and have been documented in important scientific publications during the past 35 years. Of his 50 publications, over 20 were aimed specifically at improving care of patients by Pathology departments and were published by The College of American Pathologists who recruited Fred to provide leadership to this important medical subspecialty. During the 20 years of study, Fred was driven to conduct a enormous yearly study to make recommendations aimed at improving medical care. For example one typical study reviewed almost 50,000 similar patient result records from 640 hospital Pathology departments and a subsequent medical publication of Fred and his colleagues findings recommended patient care improvements that were evaluated and adopted world wide.

Fred also was a very popular and highly rated enthusiastic speaker at yearly national meetings where he described how Pathology medical care could be improved.

During the years of his Pathology practice Fred had leadership roles in a number of outstanding United States academic Pathology programs, ending his career at Henry Ford Hospital Center in Detroit.

Peter J Howanitz MD
New York, NY USA
Professor Emeritus
SUNY Downstate Medical Center
Brooklyn NY USA

Fred was a good and loyal friend, an insightful and perceptive pathologist, and one of the most intelligent and educated persons I have known. Here´s one of my fondest Fred Meier stories. At a CAP Quality Practices Committee meeting that I was chairing, I decided to prank Fred for his tardiness knowing he shows up late at 8:30, while the rest of us were in the room having breakfast by 7:30. When he arrived, I told him we could accommodate his lecture on the sinking of the Titanic whenever he was ready. Shocked, he said he missed that assignment from last time we met and could he be excused for about 30 minutes to get his thoughts together. Well, he came back and gave us a 45-minute detailed lecture on what really happened and caused the sinking of Titanic from a non-fatal glancing blow by an iceberg. He diagrammed it all on the flip chart. Root cause- failure to close the lower deck hold doors! This was before the ability to consult the internet in the palm of your hand, so this was all from his recall. We were shocked, absolutely blown away, and gave him a long-standing ovation! That was Fred.
I have many more. Fred was a procrastinator. He was superbly analytic, to a flaw, as he often couldn´t move past detail. But that was his function for us. You just had to mine that intellect. I did that after committee dinners, in the bar over a grappa for many years. Then when he accepted my offer of a job at Henry Ford Hospital after he left the chair position at A.I. Dupont Nemours Children's Hospital for his apolitical expression of his unwavering principles, I placed him in areas here that needed that level of analysis and that could be slow. He really wanted to be a surgical pathologist, but he was trained as a microbiologist, and one of the most insightful clinical pathologists I have ever known. After 6 months of surgical pathology, we all had enough. Fred was very disappointed. So, I asked Fred to train himself with Dr. Redline, the renowned placental pathologist at Cleveland Clinic, to become our dedicated placental pathologist because very few give a hoot about when that is signed out. Then I crafted a new and challenging role of division head of regional medical laboratories for him which was principally all clinical pathology. Fred assembled a supervisory group and rode the circuit to our 25+ medical centers at the time and improved the quality of our operations tremendously. In that arena, he devised the early data analytics of the consistency of outpatient laboratory performance and execution and defined the leading specimen and order defects that detracted from a quality patient and clinician experience. This was the precursor of our deviation management system. This resulted in his 2005 Archives of Pathology publication with Bruce Jones from their national CAP Q-Probes experience, "Point-of-Care Testing Error: Sources and Amplifiers, Taxonomy, Prevention Strategies, and Detection" (2005: 129; 1262 - 1267. DOI: 10.5858/2005-129-1262-PTESAA).
Fred never lost interest in contributing to surgical pathology and joined me in a grant funded through the University of Pittsburgh to study "Error detection in anatomic pathology" that we published with Steve Raab in the Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine (2005;129:1237-45. doi: 10.5858/2005-129-1237-EDIAP)
That work evolved to a classification and process for that assessment through standardized amended report analyses of the magnitude and impact of laboratory errors in surgical pathology, published in his 2011 seminal publication "Study of amended reports to evaluate and improve surgical pathology processes." in Advances in Anatomic Pathology with myself and Ruan Varney, our quality manager (2011; 18:406-13. doi: 10.1097/PAP.0b013e318229bf20).
Much of his quality work in surgical pathology is summarized in his deeply thoughtful book chapter "The Landscape of Error in Surgical Pathology" in R. E. Nakhleh (ed.), Error Reduction and Prevention in Surgical Pathology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-2339-7_2. Springer: New York, 2015.
Fred Meier was one of a kind. I will miss him.
-Richard Zarbo

Rest in peace, Fred. Your kindness and love will forever be remembered. May God bless you for your selfless service and love for others. To Nancy and the family, may Mother Mary comfort and strengthen you in this difficult time.

Fred you inspired me in many things as an obstetrician and Gyneacologist your passion for the health of women.may God reward you receive your crown .But with Faith I know you have gone to my Father's Home one day I will hear you say Sr Priscilla welcome Hom. REST IN PEACE FRED