HPCI News: How Iowa Hospitals Score in Patient Safety?
To: Members and selected others
Hospitals across the United States are showing incremental improvement when it comes to patient safety, but according to the latest release of the standard public score regarding patient safety, more work must be done. The updated Hospital Safety Scores – the “A,” “B,” “C,” “D” or “F” grades assigned to U.S. general hospitals based on infections, injuries and medical and medication errors – were released last week by The Leapfrog Group, an independent, national, not-for-profit organization of employer purchasers of health care and the nation’s leading experts on patient safety. Scores were assigned to forty-seven (47) hospitals in greater Iowa area, with eleven (11) receiving an “A,” the highest score. See the links below for individual hospital scores.
The Hospital Safety Score highlights the country’s safest hospitals and warns against those with unacceptable safety records in order to save lives and bring attention to our nation’s silent epidemic of deaths and injuries as a result of medical errors. The Score was peer-reviewed in the April 2013 issue of the Journal of Patient Safety.
“We are pleased to see that hospitals are using the Hospital Safety Score to create change, but it is clear that more improvements in patient safety are needed,” said Leah Binder, President and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, which administers the Hospital Safety Score. “We congratulate the hospitals that have achieved high Scores thus far and hope that each hospital, regardless of its previous grade, continues to strive for a rapid reduction in the errors, accidents and injuries that cause unnecessary harm.”
“The people of the greater Iowa area should use the Hospital Safety Score as a valuable resource for locating the hospitals with the best record of patient safety. It is one important piece of information they can use to choose a hospital and raise questions with their doctors,” said Garth Bowen, Co-Chair of the Iowa Health Buyers Alliance. “We will use the Hospital Safety Score in our community to:
- Educate the public about patient safety and taking precautions when admitted to a hospital
- Work with policymakers to hold hearings and advance legislative options to reduce deaths by infection, injury and error,
- Communicate with hospitals and health plans to set goals for getting to straight ‘As’ in greater Iowa, and
- Work with our employer and other purchaser members on contracting, value-based purchasing, benefits design and employee educational programs to spur safety improvements in our hospitals.”
Calculated under the guidance of a nine-member Blue Ribbon Panel of patient safety experts, the Hospital Safety Score uses 26 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to produce a single score representing a hospital’s overall performance in patient safety.
For more information on the Hospital Safety Score, or to find out the score of your local hospital, visit www.hospitalsafetyscore.org.
About The Leapfrog Group
The Hospital Safety Score is
an initiative of The Leapfrog Group
(www.leapfroggroup.org), a national nonprofit organization using the
collective leverage of large purchasers of health care to initiate
breakthrough improvements in the safety, quality, and affordability of
health care for Americans. The flagship Leapfrog Hospital Survey allows
purchasers to structure their contracts and purchasing to reward the highest
performing hospitals. The Leapfrog Group was founded in November 2000 with
support from the Business Roundtable and national funders, and is now
independently operated with support from its purchaser and other members.
Paul M. Pietzsch, MPH
HPCI - IHBA Office
4430 Ashley Park Drive
West Des Moines, Iowa 50265
(515) 778-6300